Snake Cradle

by Roberta Sykes

  One night, during a period in which Mum had let out our bedroom to someone to subsidise her income, and we children were sleeping in a rough room constructed under the house, I developed a bad cold. Mum, exhausted from her day but not prepared to let me keep everyone awake with my coughing, brought a bowl of boiling eucalyptus water and towel to my bunk where I lay sleeping. She sat on a packing case and held the steaming bowl in one hand while positioning the towel over my head and the bowl with the other, then she promptly fell asleep.

  I woke up screaming from the burning pain across my chest. Mum scooped me up in her arms and, yelling to everyone in the house that she was going, she ran out into the night carrying me. The hospital was a fair walk from our house by road, but Mum ignored the road and belted up a wild and rocky track over Melton Hill. She ran all the way.

  When we arrived at the old casualty department, which was built from corrugated iron, Mum screamed and a nurse ran out to meet us. A young and inexperienced doctor came shortly, rubbed some thick sort of gel, similar to vaseline, on my chest and bound it on fast with sticking plaster; so tight I could barely breathe. Mum carried me home, she was crying all the way.

  The doctor had told her to bring me back to casualty the next day when there’d be more experienced staff on duty to treat me. When we arrived and I’d been sat up on a table and looked at, the staff sent Mum outside. They tried to remove the plaster but it was stuck fast to my skin, and in the process my horribly bubbled skin was ripped. Then they filled a big tin full of tepid water, took my clothes off, cut across the plaster in places, and, lifting me into it, made me crouch down so the water came up to my neck.

  After a while Mum’s face appeared around the door, perhaps she distrusted them when they asked her to wait outside. When she saw me sitting in the tin, she pushed her way in and demanded to know what the nurse was doing to me. The nurse immediately went to get the doctor.

  My arms hung over the sides of the tin, and I used them to push myself up a bit when the doctor spoke to me. Mum, the nurse and this doctor stood around me, quiet and staring, so I looked down at myself. Ugly strips and clumps of sticking plaster were hanging off me and taking my brown skin off with them. Underneath was a layer of bright pink and red, and I started to weep. So, too, did Mum and the nurse.

  The doctor who had seen me the night before was called and we could hear him being soundly abused in the next room while the nurse was fixing me up with new dressing. This time I was given gauze, cotton wool and regular bandages tied loosely around my whole upper body, fashioned in a sort of thick singlet. Mum was told to keep me in a darkened room, as treatment for shock.

  I survived all manner of injuries and illnesses, diseases and treatments—any of which could have killed me. But the effect of all these medical traumas was that I failed to thrive. By the time I was six years old, Dellie was taller and heavier than me. From then on, people often mistakenly believed her to be the eldest, and when we were out strangers would address their remarks and questions to her. Mum, however, continued to accord to me the responsibility—and some small measure of authority—which goes to the eldest child. Fortunately Dellie had an easygoing temperament and no real conflict stemmed from this in our early years, but I was forced to assert myself with some people in an effort to protect my sisters and maintain my ‘oldest child’ position.

  Dellie’s apparently laidback attitude was her way of dealing with the problems she and I faced as black children in an otherwise almost all-white environment. Leonie was not subjected to anything like the same amount of hostility, racism and rudeness which Dellie and I encountered.

  One reason why people outside our family generally accepted me as spokesperson for us children was that Dellie was very shy. Another anecdote from our stock of family jokes centres on an episode which occurred when Mum sent Dellie, aged four, to the nearby shop when I was too sick to go. Dellie returned and told Mum she couldn’t find the shop even though she’d accompanied me along the two short blocks many times.

  ‘I told you to ask someone if you couldn’t find it,’ Mum said.

  ‘I did ask someone, Mummy.’

  ‘Who did you ask?’

  ‘A man.’

  ‘And what did he tell you?’ Mum continued her questioning.

  ‘He wouldn’t tell me.’

  ‘He wouldn’t tell you?’ Mum asked incredulously. ‘Why wouldn’t he tell you?’

  ‘Well,’ Dellie answered in her shy manner, ‘I asked him under my breath.’

  Dellie developed different ways of coping, or not coping, with the discomfort and stress in our lives. She’d say no when told to do errands and chores, whereas I was endlessly obliging and eager to please, and consequently she received many slaps and hidings. Even at four she would pit herself against Aunty Glad, spitting castor oil all over both herself and our aunt. She’d wrench the leather strap that was used to hit us out from Mum’s or Aunty Glad’s hand and run away with it. Her incontinence drew their wrath and an assortment of home remedies, all of which she defied. And she developed a series of uncontrollable tics—facial spasms during which her features would become distorted—that we all found distressing.

  These tics took numerous forms and each would last a few weeks or months. For several weeks the tic would cause her jaw to jut forward violently every few minutes, straining the thick cords in her neck. After a while, its form would change and instead her tongue would come whipping out of her mouth and straining to touch the bottom of her chin. For a few months we would live with this unhappy person who we were always telling, ‘Stop pulling faces’, and we would have to explain to strangers that she wasn’t poking her tongue out at them; that she just couldn’t help it. As suddenly as it had arrived, that tic would disappear and be replaced by another, which collapsed her face and caused it to jerk to the right or left. Sometimes, all the facial tics would disappear entirely, and instead Dellie would seize upon a piece of her hair and keep tugging at it until, a few strands at a time, her head developed a collection of bald spots.

  Probably as a result of this, Dellie was quite withdrawn around people with whom she was not familiar. When she was calm, her face was round, her cheeks plump, and she had stunning large dark eyes and full, shapely lips. People often passed remarks to Mum in front of us all on her beauty. With my smaller eyes frequently darkened by the deep shadows of my ailments, thin and often sunken features and cheek bones that stuck out of my face, Mum, while accepting the compliments on Dellie’s beautiful features, would pat me on the head and reply, ‘Yes, and this one’s clever.’ Rather than a compliment, however, in my early adult years my mother’s words became a heavy cross to carry.

  3

  I was shaking with fear the day Mum took me down to the Catholic school. However, the Kindergarten was run by an elderly and very kindly woman, Sister Teresa, who shortly after offered to take Dellie as well. Mum was then able to put Leonie into the council creche and pursue a regular job.

  She found work as a laundress at the Mater Hospital. When she first started, she was helping another older woman, but over time that woman retired and Mum took on the work single-handed. She’d rise at about three or four in the morning, rain, hail or shine, and cycle out to the hospital, which was miles away. By sunrise, the first loads of sheets were on the line and Mum would cycle home again. She’d then wake us, prepare our breakfast and lunches, and shepherd us off. She had a baby seat on the handlebars for Leonie and doubled Dellie on the rear carrier. I had to walk, although sometimes she’d put me on the seat and let me steer while she walked and pushed the lot of us along on the bike.

  When we came out of kindy in the afternoon, Mum would be standing there with Leonie already in her seat, and we’d go back up over the hills to our home. That was our routine. Mum would then have a nap (we’d already have had one on our little mats at kindy), and I’d watch the littlies play in the yard and handwash our clothes with soap in a galvanised bucket on the ground, ready for Mum to rinse and hang out when she wok
e up. This washing was really a great game for me because I’d spend most of the time blowing beautiful big soapy bubbles into the air through my fingers, to the delight of my sisters. As Townsville is in the tropics, work which involved playing water games was cooling and almost always a pleasure.

  Even when Mum started work at the hospital, she continued her laundry work at home on weekends and after school, though not to the same extent as before. However, this still meant a lot of work for me, but work always made me feel happy. We didn’t have a washing machine, and our laundry was only a lean-to attached to the house and therefore very exposed to the weather, but it never became really cold in Townsville, although in the rainy season there were often deluges and floods. Mum would lift the heavy sheets and shirts from the copper with a wooden poker and put them into one of the concrete tubs and cover them with water. Then she’d have me jump up and wash my feet in the empty tub before putting me in on the clothes to pound and thoroughly rinse the suds out of them. I’d stand up there, happy as a lark, with my skirt tucked into the bottom of my bloomers, stomping away in the water and having great fun.

  Mum was always busy. When there wasn’t paid work to do, she would sit at her treadle machine and make clothes for us, turning old and worn sheets into bloomers and cheap white flannelette into singlets. She sewed each of us a ‘fancy’ dress for the annual show, which was always held in winter. She made them from the same pattern, which was often discussed with me before being purchased, but varied the colours. One year she made smart A-line dresses, in navy and wine, with little white Peter Pan collars and cuffs. She also crotcheted, and we each had a lace frock which we were made to wear when she had to trot us out to government departments.

  Mum’s thrift extended to the yard and the kitchen. She grew snake beans, bananas and pumpkins, and we often lived off them. As well as mango trees, she had a row of pawpaw trees around the perimeter of the yard, the flowers of which she carefully fertilised in case the bees weren’t as industrious as she needed them to be. We ate steamed green pawpaw as a rather tasteless but nutritious vegetable and diced ripe pawpaw for dessert.

  After a year at kindy, I was deemed ready to go to St Joseph’s primary school, which was in the same compound. Dellie was to remain at kindy for another year, so although I was nervous about moving off alone, the change made me feel older.

  I wasn’t at St Joseph’s long before Mum became ill. She took me aside and told me that she would have to send us away for a while, and that I was going to have to look after Dellie. In conjunction with Father Gard and the nuns at the school, she had arranged for us to go to St Joseph’s orphanage in Rockhampton.

  She took us the five hundred miles by train and we were met at the station and taken into the countryside to a big imposing building on top of a hill. As we were being driven along, Dellie and I were anxious and upset, and the driver, another priest or a brother, told us that all the food we were going to eat at the orphanage, which he called a school, was grown on the property by the people who lived there From the car window I could see large tracts of land under cultivation, just like in picture books I’d read, so I thought this new life would be exciting.

  The staff at the hospital where Mum was to have her operation in Townsville had told her she could keep Leonie with her. Leonie was about two years old and her food was still supplemented by breastfeeding. However, Mum was visibly upset by having to leave us at the orphanage and kept promising to come back and get us. It hadn’t crossed my mind that she wouldn’t so I became confused when she kept repeating her promise to reassure us. I knew nothing about orphanages but had glimpsed older girls who were boarders at our school in Townsville and so assumed our lives would be something like theirs.

  At the orphanage, Mum spent a little time with us in a parlour where she spoke to the nuns before being taken to Rockhampton to catch her train back to Townsville.

  Mum had told me that while I was there I’d be able to meet a cousin of ours named Valda. We never knew we had any cousins, save for Aunty Glad’s children. After watching Mum drive out of sight down the hill, and holding Dellie while we shed a few tears, I thought we’d then get to see this mysterious relative.

  As soon as Mum left, we were taken out of the nice building which was the nun’s quarters, and walked over to another part of the complex. A man working in the garden was called to take our suitcase away. There were no children about and I wondered where they were. Probably working somewhere out in those fields, I thought, wrongly as it turned out.

  Dellie was still crying loudly when the sister told us she was leaving us to play in their new recreation hall. This was a vast and very splendid, lowset building with glass windows. The nun opened the door with a key from her belt, pushed us inside and locked the door again. Except for a few wooden forms the hall was empty. I sat down and tried to distract Dellie from crying but there was nothing in the huge room to use for a game or diversion. The windows were all closed and I was unable to open them. At six years old, I wasn’t very strong and bolts and catches were still a bit of a mystery to me. The hall became unbearably hot and by the time a nun came to fetch us eventually, I was upset too.

  We were taken to another building to be processed, then we were given baths in a tub and our hair was washed and checked for lice. There were several nuns involved in this induction and they didn’t really talk to us but about us, making comments about how thin I was but remarking that we were very clean. One nun ran her hand over my hair and said, ‘Islanders. Put them in the Islanders dormitory.’

  The dormitory building was large and double-storey. It had windows made of ply which could be held open by propping them up with sticks, but on that day they were all closed and the whole place was very dark. Our suitcase was waiting at the door and the nun and I hauled it up the narrow stairs. We were taken to two little bunks side by side, and I was told to put our pyjamas, soap and toothbrushes into small lockers which stood nearby. I was embarrassed when the nun rummaged in our suitcase because I wasn’t used to anyone outside the family looking at our things. She sorted out some frocks, bloomers, singlets and socks and put them in the locker shelves. Everything else, she said, was to remain in the suitcase, and it would be locked up for us in the port room.

  By the time we were taken to the dining room, another huge space with long wooden tables and forms on which to sit, I was exhausted and hungry, and Dellie was still crying. She was inconsolable and remained so for most of the time we were there. The dining hall was dim and empty when we arrived and we were made to sit at two separate tables. Dellie screamed louder and held out her little arms to me. I could do nothing except try to signal her with my face to be quieter.

  The doors opened and hundreds of children, and a few adults, streamed in. No one was talking but the noise of so many shoes on the floor and the scratch and clash of forms being moved to and fro was thunderous. When everyone was seated, the room fell quiet for Grace which was said by a soft-voiced nun somewhere in the middle of the room. Otherwise, only Dellie’s loud cries broke the silence. Big girls then began ferrying trays of food and jugs of milk and water into the room. Eventually a sister took Dellie outside and I was free to look around, observe and make comparisons between what I saw and things I’d seen before.

  The boys and girls were seated in different sections, and there appeared to be far more girls than boys. There was a substantial number of people of colour, which was vastly different from my school in Townsville where Dellie and I were the only brown-skinned children. But everyone at my table was white apart from me, and they were as healthy and robust as any other group of children I’d ever seen. Seating was arranged so that at my end everyone was around the same age, and further along the room, the ages of the girls increased. Another difference between the children I had known in Townsville and these girls was their drabness. The Catholic girls at home came to school with their hair in neat plaits and matching ribbons, bows and slides in their hair. They wore pretty gold crosses and several had
gold sleepers in their ears, tiny rings with their initials and many, even those too young to tell the time, wore handsome watches. From their pockets fluttered pretty handkerchiefs and they carried themselves with an air of being precious little people. These girls had neither that air nor those symbols of being cared about. Their hair wasn’t brushed until it shone, and many of them were loath to smile because they had badly discoloured or chipped teeth.

  I don’t remember exactly how long we were at the orphanage, but it was several months, perhaps more than a year. Mum sent us Easter eggs, which the nuns made us share with other children, many of whom received no gifts, letters or visits the whole time we were there. No one came to visit Dellie and me either, but we’d get little letters from Mum which the nuns would read to us, small gifts on our birthday, such as lace hankies and toys, which they’d let us look at for a few minutes before putting them away in our locked suitcase, and colouring books, which were put in with the other colouring books in the classrooms.

  Dellie and I spent our days apart, me in a grade room and Dellie in some sort of kindergarten. At night we slept side by side in our bunks. Dellie cried almost every night, but she wasn’t alone. Frequently, the distressing sounds of many children weeping bitterly made it difficult for everyone to sleep, and sometimes the hopelessness and despair in their voices wakes me in the night to this very day.

  Dellie got a hard time because of her incontinence. The nuns and other girls thought they could shame her into stopping, but they only managed to distress her. Then responsibility for her bed-wetting was put onto me, and I was expected to wake up and take her to the toilet when she wanted to go. The problem was that she didn’t wake herself up, and the first thing I’d know about it was when I woke up to find her crying or laying quietly with big eyes and the covers pulled up tightly around her neck to prevent the acrid smell from permeating the dorm. The sister eventually put a bucket of water each night in the shower room and when I discovered the bed was wet, I had to get up and soak the sheets in the bucket. It was always pitch black when I had to do this, and I was frightened finding my way to the room in the dark and huddling over the bucket all by myself. Although it was taboo for girls to get into each other’s beds, the nuns began to overlook it when I took Dellie into mine after these bed-wetting incidents.