Snake Cradle

by Roberta Sykes

  She made me sit down and, as the water was just coming to the boil, she gave me the first cup of tea, sweet with a lot of condensed milk, ‘to counter the shock,’ she said.

  My tree-climbing skills entered the family’s store of jokes, and I was advised that it was better to keep my feet on the ground. This hiccup didn’t deter me. No one in my family or circle of friends could climb faster or further than I. So what if tree-climbing freedom was bought with a few thrills and spills?

  Over time, Laaka built a little lock-up, then a small shack on his block, and we were able to go there of a Saturday and return home on the Sunday. He installed an ingenious method of getting water up from the river to his place, which could be set up when he arrived and taken down and stored in the shed when he departed. He also made a light can, consisting of two cylinders, which I watched him solder together, one of which fitted upside inside the other, and from two tiny jets at the top some type of gas quietly spurted. When he put a match to this fitting, a small and steady flame burned for hours.

  Weekends at Black River were fun for us kids, mainly because it was a change from where we were the rest of the time. Dellie and I ran along the stretch of river that was within eyesight of Laaka’s block; the water was never deep when we were there, and often we had to dig a hole in the riverbed to reach damp sand. Leonie was small and neither interested nor allowed to accompany us on our explorations. At the far limit of where we were allowed to play, which wasn’t very far, was a structure where a railway track crossed the river. No train ever came across it when we were there that I recall, but trains ran only infrequently at that time. We sometimes played on this bridge, dangling from its crossbars and dropping onto the sandy, and occasionally wet, riverbed below.

  We were used to being the only people around there, so it came as a shock to me once, as we were making our way to the railway crossing, to look over and see other kids on the opposite bank. As soon as I got over my surprise I was happy, because they were dark coloured children, just like me and Dellie.

  When they realised I’d seen them, they began to shout at us. ‘Go on, get out of here. What’d’ya think ya doin’ here? Go on, get out!’ There was a number of them and they swarmed down to the crossing where they quickly assumed proprietary positions, squatting in the angles of the bridge where the strutted arms were joined to the framework. On the way, and in case we thought they were joking, they’d pelted stones at us across the river—and very adept they were at it, too. They could make their pebbles skim and bounce on the water’s surface, and although none of the stones reached our side of the river, I felt these weren’t kids to get into a stone fight with.

  We decided to leave when we saw them take over our favourite playing places. Neither Mum nor Laaka was interested in coming down and seeing these children, or in backing us up to get them to share instead of trying to scare us away. Instead, we could hear their jolly voices ring out as they laughed and played at our spot until it was time for us to go. After they’d spotted us there, we felt that these kids began to police the area quite regularly on the weekends, and much of the fun went out of going to Laaka’s farm once they’d put an end to our total freedom. I met one of these ‘unfriendly’ children in Sydney, twenty years later, and we had a good laugh about our differing perspectives on these incidents, and we became friends after all that time.

  On our way to Black River, we passed through the suburb of Garbutt, which was considered the absolute edge of Townsville, on the outbound northern road. Since discovering that the coloured children we met in town lived at Garbutt, my attraction to the area had grown. I was pleased to find out where it was, and now had only to work out how to get to and from the area by public transport.

  My weekdays were busy with schoolwork, homework and helping Mum, and Garbutt was a long way away. Weekends were the only time I had even a small chance of going there, and, even so, I had dozens of other factors to juggle. Being the oldest, I was expected to go to the regular Saturday afternoon matinee with Dellie and Leonie, and look after them. Saturday would have been the best day to go because buses ran to and from Garbutt frequently, bringing shoppers into town, unlike Sundays.

  When I finally made my first trip to Garbutt, it happened quite spontaneously. One morning, a girl I met regularly at the picture theatre walked into the Roxy Theatre where the ‘Juvenile Jamboree’ was being held. Her name was Jeannie Paterson. When it was time for me to take Dellie and Leonie home, we walked them to the crest where Stanley Street forked and watched them go the rest of the way alone before we ran off back down the hill. I knew that Mum would be livid but I’d told Dellie to tell her that I was going to visit at my friend’s house for a while and would be back later in the afternoon.

  We went by bus to Garbutt, and Jeannie showed me around the dismal and dusty suburb. Once the bus left the main road and began running up and down the Garbutt streets, the poverty of the area became obvious. Jeannie pointed out play areas along the way.

  When we got out at her stop we found no one was at home at her house. So, we crossed over to a big field where children were playing rounders. People called to Jeannie and she waved, but we didn’t join any of their groups. A pair of ten year olds don’t go around making formal introductions, so we just lounged about and enjoyed ourselves, chatting through the afternoon. We went back to her house and found a box of Weetbix opened on the table, and we put a couple of them in our pockets for our lunch.

  By mid-afternoon, I began to worry about getting back home before I ended up in real trouble from Mum. I was reluctant to leave because Jeannie had told me that she and her friends had forgone going to the city theatre as a good scary film was being shown that night at the Garbutt Picture Theatre, and nobody could afford to go to the pictures twice in the one day.

  Jeannie sat with me at the bus stop, then I went back to town. I was afraid to go home because I knew I’d be in trouble, but eventually I crept in. Mum was strangely quiet, and I realised Dellie or Leonie had told her I’d run off with Jeannie. Later she took me aside.

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘You remember that girl who waved at me when you met us after the pictures two weeks ago? Well, I went to her house.’

  ‘You went to Garbutt?’

  ‘Yes. That’s where she lives.’

  ‘Well, let me tell you this, my girl. If you ever go to her house or to Garbutt again, you’ll be eating your meals standing up for weeks, you hear me? I’ll take the skin off your backside and you won’t be able to sit down.’

  It was no time to push my luck by asking why. Mum’s face was rigid and I thought she was going to fly into a rage, but instead she just got up and left the room. I ran around tidying up the house, quiet as a mouse, trying to get back into her good books. For the next few weeks she watched me like a hawk and kept me so busy with work that there was no chance for me to ‘think up mischief.

  Once I had found out how to get to Garbutt, though, there was no stopping me. I’d tell Mum I was going to visit a girl from my school, Althea Rankin, and then go by her house on my way to Garbutt. I was able to exploit the fact that we didn’t have a phone, and Mum never used the public telephone herself—I took care of any phone business. So she was unable to check on my whereabouts by ringing Althea’s house.

  At Garbutt I’d watch kids playing rounders, but because I didn’t live in the area and wasn’t there when games started, I was generally not included in the teams. Instead, I’d sit on the wooden fence and watch.

  An old man with ebony skin and short, soft grey hair on his head and face often came to sit with me. His clothes were tattered and he wore no shoes; the long thin bones in his feet were clearly etched in the light-coloured dust which clung to him all the way up past his ankles. Despite his age, his feet were extraordinarily flexible, and he used them in the same way another person might use their hands. He could pick up any object by stepping on it and curling his toes around it, and then, if he needed to, he’d bend his knee and pass the objec
t up to his hand.

  The first time he joined me, he told me the names of everyone playing on the field. He told me the names he knew them by and the ‘whitefella’ names by which they were called. Then he began to point out their features—one woman’s high-pitched laugh, the almost tumbling awkward gait with which one stubby youth chased after the ball—and he attributed each of these features to the sound made or the stance adopted by different birds, fish and animals.

  He drew animals in the dirt using a stick clutched between his toes, and showed the same dexterity as someone who drew with a pen in their hand. Anyone who attracted attention by their sound or antics on the field, he would depict on the ground their creature guise. His work was so fine and detailed—birds with their mouths wide open in protest, others engaged in a long-legged run with wings outstretched and flapping—that the totems of all the players became more familiar to me than many of the actual people, some of whom I never met or spoke to.

  Years later, when I first saw a rock painting I recognised it as the same art—the depiction of familiar people doing familiar things being portrayed in the form of birds and other creatures.

  ‘Who am I?’ I asked the old man, after a couple of sessions when I’d grown comfortable chatting with him. He gazed away as if trying to decide whether to answer me or not, then he picked up the stick in his toes and drew in the dirt.

  ‘You fella snake.’ He spoke towards the ground as we both leaned against the fence and watched his foot drawing, as though it had a life of its own. ‘Baby one, eh,’ he added after a pause, a twinkle in his cloudy eyes.

  I watched the coiled snake taking form in the soil. ‘How come I’m a snake?’ I wondered if he was referring to the fact that I was skinny and underweight.

  ‘Um . . . snake. Anyone can see. Any fella wit’ eyes, he can see. You very good snake,’ he told me, smiling.

  ‘Poisonous snake?’ I thought of the lightning-fast snakes I’d seen in Ram Chandra’s bags and boxes, and the idea of being so quick somehow appealed to me.

  ‘Not very poison,’ he replied, and I could feel him watching me as I examined his finished representation. The old man had a habit of not looking at me when he was talking, rarely meeting my eyes with his own, and I’d become used to—though still conscious of—his sideways inspections of my reactions to the things he was teaching me in his game-playing way.

  As I glanced up to see what he was thinking, from the corner of my eye I caught his dusty foot stretching out to cover the image. In one smooth action he wiped the picture out and the ground was again flat and bare.

  ‘A bit deadly?’ I was pushing, I wanted to hear something great about myself to hang onto.

  ‘Yeah. Lil’ bit deadly,’ he said, as his quite unremarkable wrinkled face was briefly transformed by one of his rare smiles.

  6

  Along with her other jobs, Mum and I continued to do the laundry for the YWCA hostel. She inquired about the Association’s activities and found that it ran clubs for girls of different ages, in a different location from the hostel. So, she enrolled Dellie and me to go there on Saturday afternoons, instead of going to the pictures.

  Initially, we were heartbroken about this turn of events. Our visit to the pictures had been our one big weekly outing, and we were locked into the serials, such as Superman and The Lone Ranger, which were shown along with two films classified as suitable for children. These constituted the standard dose of fantasy to which we’d become accustomed, although we strongly rejected the roles given to people with whom we should have identified, such as Blacks, Indians and women. In games we played after viewing these films, neither Dellie nor I would agree to play Jane or the natives carrying loads on their heads. Instead, we’d both want the part of Tarzan, so that we could be strong, beat on our chests and overcome adversity. Such success depended on us being white and male—but fantasy allows one to overlook these shortcomings.

  Joining the YWCA turned out to be a good compromise. Instead of spending Saturday afternoons watching actors do exciting things, we began to learn to do exciting things ourselves. Under the guidance of our group leader, an energetic, sympathetic and fun-loving woman, Fay Naylor, we learned how to knot ropes and carry and use pocket knives. She organised camps to Magnetic Island, where the YWCA had its own hut.

  Dellie’s bed-wetting was still a problem and we were burdened with plastic sheeting and other paraphernalia to deal with it. Fay, however, was the only person I ever met who was considerate about this and relieved me of the heavy feeling that caring for my sister was solely my responsibility when we were away. She would let Dellie sleep in a bunk near her and put me with the older girls at the opposite end of the hut. It was such a relief.

  At first we went on overnight camps, travelling to the island by boat on Saturday morning and returning Sunday, but during school holidays we went for a week at a time. During fresh-water shortages, Fay taught us how to wash ourselves in a single cupful of water when we came back covered in salt and sand from a day on the beaches. We sizzled sausages in pans around the campfire and sang childish versions of bawdy ditties. Each day, she marched us down the hill to use the facilities on the island, and had us vying with regular tourists to get our turn with table-tennis and other games equipment; ventures which substantially increased our sense of self-esteem and social competitiveness.

  Fay was also the first white person I was able to speak to about the racism we encountered in our daily lives in the town, and over and above being open, sympathetic and caring enough to listen, she actively prevented race becoming an issue amongst the group of girls in her care. She was sensitive to slights we suffered from outsiders, such as when Dellie or I was left unserved at shops and kiosks on the island. She also—and without embarrassing us—ensured that we had our full YWCA uniforms, fitting us out from a store of bits and pieces which other girls had grown out of or left behind. Sometimes she even spent her own money so that we had the proper knives, pens and whistles required for our group’s activities.

  On one of these camps I became aware of how intensely many dogs didn’t like me. I’d already had a few nasty nips from dogs on the mainland as we’d walked to and from school, but thought this was because when anything or anyone appeared threatening to us I was obliged to be the one at the front.

  On the island, even in our big group, dogs singled me out and came straight for me. On several occasions other girls had to beat them off with sticks and it became something of a joke, though not to me, that dogs mistook my skinny legs for soup bones.

  In Townsville I continued to see my friend Jeannie from time to time at the Juvenile Jamboree or in the streets shopping on Saturdays, but opportunities to visit Garbutt became rare.

  One Saturday, the YWCA held a fete in the large yard behind the Meeting House. Planning and preparation took weeks and we were each assigned tasks for the day. I was to be Chief Cook, in charge of barbecuing sausages and serving them up on slices of bread with tomato sauce. I arrived early to help string decorations up in the trees and bushes, but after only a short time I felt ill and was sent to lay down on a day bed in the office.

  I had the most severe headache I’d ever experienced and fell into a deep sleep. Mum arrived and when she and Fay woke me, I stumbled down to the yard and stood behind my sausage stand, swaying. They took me back upstairs and made me stretch out again, and I lay there quietly crying as I could hear the happy sounds of the fete drifting in through the window.

  I must have fallen asleep again because I suddenly saw several people in the room fretting over me. Then I was at home in my own bed without any memory of how I got there, apart from the fact that someone had picked me up from the YWCA day bed and carried me.

  When I next woke, I was being trundled into the familiar environs of the children’s ward at the Townsville General Hospital by a nurse, with a doctor and Mum walking briskly along beside me.

  ‘She’s burning up. Cold sponge, Nurse.’

  The deep male voice jarred m
y head and every movement hurt me. My clothes were removed and the last thing I felt was the nurse plonking an ice-cold washer on me and whisking it over my chest and back, splashing my face and soaking the bed.

  I was lying in a darkened room when next I opened my eyes again. I looked around cautiously to see if I could recognise where I was. A lamp stood on a bedside locker and in its glow I saw a stand with tubes coming from it. The door opened and a nurse walked in. She noticed my eyes open and asked, ‘Are you awake?’

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘You’re in hospital, in a private room.’

  ‘Where’s my mum?’

  ‘I’ll go and tell them you’re awake and they’ll send for her.’ I closed my eyes to rest because I felt very weary. When I woke up, the overhead light was on and I could hear faint voices outside. The door opened and Mum’s face peered around the corner. She looked shrunken and bent, much smaller than when I’d seen her last. I was shocked. She scuttled across the short distance between the door and the bed, and fell across the lower half the bed, crying and praying. I should have been surprised by her invocation of Christ, but I felt so dazed that nothing would have surprised me.

  Oh, thank God you’re alive. Thank you, God.’ She intoned the words like a chant. After a while she blew her nose and composed herself, sitting on the straight-backed chair the nurse had placed behind her. She sat patting my hand and saying words of sympathy and endearment.

  ‘Oh, my poor darling. We didn’t think you’d live. Oh, you poor little thing.’

  I noticed suddenly how grey her hair was, and how gaunt she looked in the face. ‘Where’ve you been?’ I asked. She looked so haggard I thought she may have been in an accident.

  Mum lifted up my hand and for the first time I saw that it was bandaged and a needle and tube were attached to it. The arm didn’t look like mine—it was bare of any flesh and was just skin stretched over bones. The hand didn’t feel like mine either, because I was unable to lift or control it, although I could feel Mum holding it up.