Just as suddenly, it seemed, we’d stopped. Car doors were opened, the door beside me clicked open, and I was dragged out by rough hands on my good white sweater.
I was pushed around the rear of the vehicle, and I noticed that there was not one, but two, other cars parked there with their doors open and men pouring out of them.
I was pushed up against a timber wall, then the rough hands let me go. The dark-haired man who’d been sitting in the passenger seat stood directly in front of me. He had cold eyes and his face looked very grim.
‘Are you going to give it up?’ he asked.
‘What? Give what up?’ I was confused and I didn’t know what he was asking me.
He reached out his hand at waist level and ripped at the top of my trousers. The fabric, reinforced with silver thread, was strong and resisted his effort to tear it. He was standing very close, so I brought up my leg and delivered him a direct blow to his testicles. He bent over in pain but uttered not one sound.
I looked around in desperation. I was surrounded by what appeared to be a sea of white male faces. Some stood in the back, with brown bottles in their hands, and I realised they were drinking beer. A very tall, blond man, strikingly handsome, stood near the front, and I could make out his features very clearly. He walked towards me, stood to the right of the man doubled over in front of me and, foolishly, I thought he was coming to save me.
‘Here, don’t panic. Give me your hands.’ I mistook his expression for kindness, or maybe I was so desperate that my mind only saw what it wanted to see. I held out my hands to him. He took them, one in each of his large hands, and wrenched them up, pinning them to the wall on either side of me. The man who was doubled over stood up, and I realised that the tall man was holding me still so that this dark-haired monster could punch me again. His angry face and fist were the last things I saw.
I came to lying on the ground in the dark, inside a shed, and there seemed to be men moving all around. A sharp stone was digging into my back but I was unable to lift myself off it. A voice said, ‘Wait,’ and in the moment before I passed out again, I felt a bristled face brush roughly against my lower stomach and strong sharp teeth bite a piece out of my flesh. The pain was so severe that for a second I thought I was being stabbed, and then blackness overtook me.
I was in the middle of a nightmare. I could feel someone dragging me along the ground by one foot. My other leg became twisted beneath me until someone else pulled it free. My head was bouncing over dirt and stones. I heard a moan escape from my lips.
‘Christ,’ said a voice, and I looked up and saw in the moonlight shining brightly through the open doorway, that the man I’d kicked in the groin was standing at the door. I knew immediately that it was his voice. ‘She’s still alive.’
The sharp sound of his boots on the ground assailed my ears. When I opened my eyes again, I saw his thick boot, his kick, coming directly towards my eyes, and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do to move out of its way.
I awoke to silence. My entire body felt pain, but there was no single source of it. I was naked and cold, chilled. I crawled around on the ground and my hand struck, thank the heavens, my black trousers. I pulled them on. Then I saw the outline of my sweater in a corner as my eyes became accustomed to the dark. Moonlight still streamed through an opening in the wall where perhaps there’d once been a window. My bra and white T-shirt were with my sweater, and nearby I found my shoes. I pulled them all on. I patted around in the dark, hoping to find my underpants and socks. The cold and damp were making me feel clammy. I walked out of the shed and examined everything I had in my pockets, taking stock of what little had been left with me. I had a slim wallet, empty but for coins, and a few other small bits and pieces. I’d been carrying nothing of much value, and now I had even less. Moonlight bounced off a large white card as I pulled it from my pocket. In big letters I read ‘Invitation’ and ‘Bandstand’. It felt as though I was handling something from years ago, not just a few short hours earlier.
I looked around. The shed was in a large field. I followed the car tracks in the moonlight and came to a fence, which I walked through to where the track joined another, more frequently used, roadway. I was unsure of which direction to take. A long way off in the distance I saw a pair of carlights pass at right angles to the track on which I was standing, I set off in that direction.
I passed a driveway, just a break in a fence, and could see the silhouette of a homestead in the distance. Then I could hear dogs barking, they had probably heard me stumbling along or picked up my scent on the wind. I was too afraid of them to chance walking up the driveway to get help.
The track stopped at a T-junction where it met a narrow bitumen strip. No other car had passed, and I had no idea in which direction Brisbane lay. I was feeling very sick in my stomach, and while walking I’d become aware of a severe pain in my abdomen. I sat down beside the road to wait for more carlights to appear, but I lapsed once more into unconsciousness.
A droning sound woke me and I realised a car was coming, but it was still a long way off. I remembered the pain and slid my hand down the front of my pants. My fingers touched a gaping wound and when I pulled them out they were covered in blood. The car, when it came close enough, was a small milk van. I staggered onto the road and it stopped. I asked the driver which way was the road to Brisbane. He told me it was in the direction he was faced, but that he was turning off the road at the next corner and was unable to give me a lift. He was making his deliveries. Another car, he said, should be along very soon, and it would be better for me to try my luck with that one.
I sat back down beside the road. After a while I thought the world was moving, the trees seemed to be going up and down, and then I realised that it was me, I was swaying even while sitting down.
I had no watch, no idea of the time, but, in shock, I had no sense of urgency. Utter tiredness overwhelmed me. When more headlights appeared, I stood up again and walked onto the road. The driver either didn’t see until late or he was afraid to stop, because he started to veer around me. Then he drew to a halt. I asked if he was going to Brisbane, and he said, yes, named a suburb I’d never heard of, and I asked him if he’d give me a lift.
I climbed into the cabin and sat huddled near the door. The warm air from his heater began to thaw my frozen limbs. I could feel localised sore spots on my legs and body. I touched my fingers to my head and found my entire face swollen. I sobbed quietly in the dark so as not to alarm the driver.
He drove slowly, and the sun was coming up when he pulled up at the vegetable farm which was his home. We were somewhere high up, but still in the town. He swung out of the truck and said if I waited a while, he’d give me a lift to a railway station. He spoke with an accent, European, perhaps Italian or Greek, I thought.
The truck was parked in front of a very large shed or storehouse. When he’d gone back up the walkway to the house on the block, some workers came out of the shed and peered at me sitting in the cabin. Eventually, one of them came over and asked me if I’d have sex with him for money. He indicated the bunch of workers who stood, eager and hopeful, in the doorway of the building. I was too exhausted even to be shocked. When he’d gone back, no doubt to relay my unwilling response, I slid across the seat and looked at my face in the rear-vision mirror. I couldn’t look as bad as I felt, I thought, if these men don’t notice how beaten up I am. A crust of dried blood lay across the top of my swollen nose, and my eyes were clotted. Every inch of my head and hair was covered in a film of dirt. Tracks from my tears had created a sort of pattern in the dark shadows beneath my eyes. I looked down at my clothes. My good white sweater was filthy. It looked as if I’d been rolling in mud.
The owner returned and said he would drive me to wherever I wanted to go. When I said Chermside he just nodded and we set off. The sun was well up now and I noticed on his clock that the time was moving towards 8 am. I thanked him without much enthusiasm when he dropped me right outside the house where I was living.
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When I walked in I went straight to the bed, and stared up at the ceiling. One of the other girls with whom I shared the room jumped up and ran out to fetch the woman of the house. She came in and very kindly and gently asked me what had happened, and was upset when I could only shake my head.
She had another girl run a bath for me and helped me to take my clothes off and climb into it. She was very distressed by the dark bruises that seemed to cover my body and by the places on my abdomen where, she thought, I’d been bitten by some sort of animal. How right she was!
When I was alone, soaking in the bath, tears again overwhelmed me, turning into great sobs. I could sense the anxiety in the house over my grief and my appearance. I didn’t see Josie and I hadn’t asked if she was home. There seemed no point, no point in asking or saying anything.
The woman of the house came into the bathroom with a cup. She said it was a drink of gin, and it would help me in case I ‘needed to lose, well, you know’. I accepted her act of kindness but couldn’t drink it. Apart from the sherry Mum had tried to force me to drink as some sort of appetite stimulant when I’d been ill and underweight, I didn’t drink and this didn’t seem a good time to start.
When I got out of the bath I wrapped myself up and lay on my bed. Sleep was a million miles away. I could hear everyone out in the sitting room discussing me. They were afraid I might want to go to the police.
I was brought many warm cups of milky tea, slices of bread spread thickly with peanut paste—which everyone in the house knew was my absolute favourite food—and bowls of soup. I had no appetite, I drank and ate nothing. I lay in the shadowed room for days, not really sleeping, not really awake. From time to time my mind raced through a list of things I ought to do: get up, go to work, wash my filthy clothes, pack, move out, and even get ready to attend ‘Bandstand’. Then my mind would float away to nothingness once more.
Fragments of conversations floated in to me now and then, people in the sitting room, in the kitchen, outside in the hall. The tension in the house was tangible, but I couldn’t rouse myself to take any of it in. I felt no urgency to do anything but lay there quietly in the half dark.
How many days passed? I have no idea. Three? Four? Then I woke and gingerly sat up on the side of the bed. I noticed that the other bed in the room had been slept in, and obviously the routine of the household had continued without my being aware of it.
Soon a girl came to the door and saw me sitting up. She rushed away and came back with another cup of warm tea. When I took it from her, my hands shook and when I lifted it to my lips I found them flaky and stuck together. I could see the pity in her eyes, and tears flowing down her face as she tried to help me.
I had a shower and stood under the hot water for a long time; refusing to look down at myself, wishing the water could wash away the atrocities that sat out there on the edge of my mind. I felt that if I tried hard enough, I could push them even further away, and it would be as though they had never happened.
I learned that Josie had gone back to the mission, and the fear that my presence would attract police attention was paramount in everyone’s mind. An Aboriginal household was a target for the police anyway, and they didn’t need me around to give the police justification for their unwanted attention.
As soon as I was able, I packed my things and walked down to catch a tram. I had a few pounds from my savings, my rent money had been returned to me, and everyone in the house felt so badly about what was happening that they had given me the little money they had.
I got off the tram in the Valley, bought a copy of the Courier-Mail, and sat on a street bench to read the accommodation section. I found two advertisements for ‘share accommodation for working female lodgers’ at nearby New Farm. I rang one and heard that the room had gone, the other was still available. I picked up my suitcase and set off on foot to find the address.
I was exhausted by the time I arrived. One of the residents showed me around—shared kitchen, shared bathroom with a coin heater, shower and bath—and gave me a chair in the hall so I could sit and wait for the manager, who had gone up the street.
The manager asked me a few cursory questions, and in the dimly lit hall she didn’t notice my swollen face or bruises. I paid her two weeks’ rent in advance and was taken to a room off the main hallway which contained two single beds separated by a night table, and two small cupboards. The room was curtained and clean, the sheets on my bed crisp and fresh.
The manager told me where to find the government employment agency and said that there was a lot of work available, I’d get a job, no worry.
When I informed the agency of the type of work I’d been doing in the north, nursing aide and specialist machine operator, they placed me in a job in a sugar packaging company. At the factory, a small group of women gathered around the funnel of a chute all day, taking the bags which the machine had automatically filled with sugar, and adding or removing a few grains to standardise the contents before doubling the tops over to seal them. The work was boring and without challenge, there was no chance of variation or advancement, and the constant exposure to fine dust from the sugar made me wheezy.
I went back to the employment agency. My next position was at P. J. Firth, another company which made cartons, though much smaller ones than the large meat-packing boxes I had been making in Townsville. The building was two storeys, narrow and pokey, without much access to natural light and poorly ventilated. The employers were kindly though dour, as were the employees, and it seemed that they’d all been working there together, quietly and efficiently earning their wages, for decades.
I lived on hamburgers from a takeaway store nearby, and in my free time I sat in New Farm Park and ploughed my way through piles of novels and magazines. I found a book exchange, which kept the cost of my addiction to escapism within my means.
I’d been at Firth’s for a few weeks and they were happy with my work when, one Monday, during our morning-tea break I became faint and fell on the stairs. No real damage was done but the manager was concerned that I’d lost my balance, and insisted I get a medical check-up before I returned to my stapling machine. He rang the hospital and told them I was coming.
The wind was crisp but the sunlight was brilliant as I walked through the Valley to the hospital. My blood pressure and urine tests were taken and I was told to return the next afternoon for the results. As I couldn’t go back to work without a health certificate, I took my book to the park the next morning and soaked up the sun, while indulging my passion for fantasy.
As I walked back to the hospital, however, I began to shake. I had no idea why I was so distressed and out of control. I could barely walk along the footpath putting one foot in front of the other, and I tripped on the kerb as I went. The stairs which led up to casualty seemed to be several storeys high, and by the time I arrived my heart was beating savagely and I was badly out of breath. Perhaps I really was sick, I thought.
I had a long wait, and many people who arrived after me were seen before me. My concentration had disappeared and I was unable to focus on reading. I felt like an observer at a film, watching people come and go, and I had no thoughts at all apart from registering what was occurring in front of my eyes.
A tall, white-smocked doctor with a stethoscope slung around his neck came in and called my name.
He ushered me into a room, and I looked around and saw the usual charts and cut-away body pictures on the walls, a filing cabinet, phone, files and sterilising thermometer on his desk. It all seemed so normal yet there was a feeling of malignance in the air.
‘Do you have anything you want to tell me?’, the doctor asked, pulling his chair up directly in front of me so that he could stare into my eyes.
‘What sort of something?’ I replied, puzzled.
‘Could you be pregnant?’ His voice dropped as though we were sharing a secret.
‘No.’ I was suddenly angry at him for asking me such a question, and for all the implications it carried. ‘No. No.
No.’
He stood up. ‘Well, I want you to think about that, and I’ll come back and talk to you again in a few minutes.’ The door closed gently. I peeped over at the papers on his desk, read my name upside down, some other writing which was indecipherable, and in block letters in red ink, the word, POSITIVE. A red cloud rose up before my eyes and blocked out the room.
Suddenly, the door burst open again and I heard a gasp. I looked about me and was shocked. Papers from the desk were screwed up, torn and thrown around the room. The posters were torn from the walls. I was sitting on the floor and had no idea how I’d got there. In my hands were pieces of something hard and black—fragments of the broken telephone which had been torn from the wall. I kept hearing someone simultaneously wailing and laughing, an awful demented sound, and realised then that it was coming from me.
The doctor smacked my face sharply. A white-uniformed nurse hovered in the background behind him. He hauled me to my feet and flung me back into the chair.
‘She’s right, Nurse. I can handle things here.’ The door closed. He leaned into my face and asked, his teeth gritted together, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘I … I was attacked,’ I managed to whisper through parched lips.
‘No. You did this,’ he said, his arm indicating the room.
‘No. I was attacked another day. At night. By dozens of people.’
‘Listen, there’s something seriously wrong with you. I’ll fix up about this, this mess that you’ve made of my office, but I want you to go and see the social worker.’ He looked at his watch. ‘She’s probably gone for the day, but I want you to see her tomorrow. You’re pregnant and you’re going to need care. I can’t give you a certificate for your work at this stage, Just tell them you need some days off.’
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