‘My,’ she said as she approached me with downcast eyes, ‘they’re real bone buttons!’
I looked at her and saw that her gaze was fastened on the buttons of the blouse I was wearing—one I had bought with one of my early pays from the Golden Circle factory.
‘It’s second hand, I got it from a used-clothes shop.’
‘You didn’t need to have second-hand clothes, Roberta. If you’d written and asked me, I would have sent you money for a new one. But they’re lovely buttons!’
I knew she was referring to her willingness to have sent me money during the last three months, and I didn’t have the heart to say that I’d bought the blouse long before then.
Mum was getting on for sixty years old, but still she tried to drag my suitcase from my hand so she could carry it herself. Arthur was waiting a little further down the platform, and he hurried up and took it from both of us.
When we were in the car Mum said, ‘I’ve got a surprise for you. I bought a new house.’
This ‘new’ house again wasn’t new. We passed through Hermit Park, close by where we used to live, and continued right on out of town. We began to pass fields and long grass bordered parts of the road.
‘Where are we going?’
‘You’ll see,’ chirped Mum. ‘It’s not far now.’
We made a right-hand turn and pulled off onto a side road. The few houses stood on very large blocks of land, and some sites had nothing on them but scraggly grass. A left turn a short way down that street, and we were on an even smaller road.
‘Where are we?’
‘Aitkenvale.’
The house was smaller than the Norris Street house, but similarly perched on typical North Queensland stilts. It had one main bedroom and two smaller ones, which came off the loungeroom. My piano stood in the corner of the lounge. Mum had Arthur put my suitcase in the main bedroom.
I turned and asked Mum, ‘Where do you sleep?’
‘I’ve put you in the big room because I want you to be comfortable,’ she rushed towards me, her arms outstretched, ‘you poor little thing.’
‘Mum, don’t do this.’ I took a step backwards.
She composed herself and we continued our walk through the house. Kitchen on the left, directly behind the room she had given me, a large enclosed verandah room in which sat the old dining table and wooden chairs which Mum obviously carried with her from house to house, and the bathroom to the right. As was expected of me, I walked to the bathroom door and peered in. Mum stood behind me, waiting for a comment, an approval of some description.
Close to the bathroom was a toilet, but I could hardly see it for the boxes and cartons which had been stacked all about it.
‘Well, the house was somewhere else, closer to town, and then it was moved out here and put up on these poles. This is too far out of town to have sewerage, the pipes don’t reach out here. So we use this room for storage.’ Mum was smiling, she obviously thought this made our location very quaint.
My eyebrows shot up. ‘So where’s the toilet?’
‘Down in the yard. We have night soil pans and they’re collected twice a week.’
She raced off to the kitchen to put the kettle on, and I sat down at the table and rested my head on my arms. Arthur had gone downstairs and was pottering around under the house, staying out of the way, probably giving us time to say whatever needed to be said.
Mum returned with the teapot and cups. She sat down with me at the table while the tea brewed.
‘Roberta, I bought this house for you. You’re going to want privacy and you don’t want to have to have your baby under prying eyes. You can see, there’s hardly anyone out here.’ She sounded so proud of herself.
Tears flowed again from my eyes at the sound of my future. Mum patted me on the shoulder. ‘There, there, dear. You’re home now. We’re going to make sure you get everything you need.’
Nobody could give me everything I need, I thought. I need to go back to four months ago and say no when Josie asks me for my cash. No, this isn’t Josie’s fault, this is my fault for being so stupid and ugly. I need to go back and say no when I’m asked if I want a lift. I need the chance to walk all the way to Chermside, or to sit on a tram stop for a few hours, waiting for the early morning trams.
‘You’re just tired from your long trip, dear. Drink up this nice cup of tea and then go in and have a nice rest. Arthur?’ she raised her voice to call, ‘Tea’s made. Come in and have a cup.’
I couldn’t stand to sit around and play happy families, so I said I had to take a shower, I’d not had a shower for two days now, and the train trip had made me feel gritty.
‘Well, you go right ahead, dear. When you come out, we’ll be gone. We have to go to work now. I arranged to start a bit later this morning, I’m still at the Central Hotel, so you’ll know where I am. I’ll be back as soon as I get through. Will you be okay?’
I felt that I would never be okay ever again, but I nodded and went in to get pyjamas and toothbrush out of my suitcase.
I woke up hours later, startled to find myself somewhere I didn’t recognise, and to the sounds of dishes and plates being moved around in the kitchen. I briefly wondered where my sisters were, since neither of them had been at the house when I’d arrived in the morning.
Mum came to the door, a small tray in her hand.
‘I’ve made you a nice cup of tea, and I noticed you haven’t even been in the kitchen so I made you a sandwich too. Vegemite. You need iron. You look so rundown. I’ll make you a good solid meal later, when Arthur comes home from work.’
The course of least resistance with Mum was to eat whatever she put in front of you.
‘Where’re the kids?’
‘Oh, Leonie’s at school, and Dellie’s at work. They both go off early in the morning.’
I ate the sandwich and promptly went back to sleep. Some time later Mum came to the door again.
‘Dinner’s ready. Everyone’s home. Do you want to eat with us or would you rather have a tray brought in?’
I wanted to put off having to talk to anyone, and opted for the tray. Leonie brought it in, staring at me, her eyes huge, as though she didn’t quite know who I was or what was the matter with me. I wasn’t hungry and merely picked over the food. Mum came back and tried to spoon feed me the vegetables; she said I had to build up my strength.
‘Tomorrow,’ I said, and waved her away.
‘I’ll be back in to talk to you as soon as the washing up’s done, so don’t bother going back to sleep. There’s a lot we have to sort out.’
‘There’s nothing to sort out that won’t wait until tomorrow,’ and I put my head down and crashed out again.
Mum began to worry after a few days—I slept all the time. Sometimes during the day she’d come tearing in to find me sitting up in bed, sweating and trembling. ‘You were screaming,’ she’d say, ‘are you alright?’
No, I wasn’t alright, but I couldn’t talk to her about the demons that had started visiting me in my dreams—ugly figures with hard faces and short bodies.
Mum said that she had talked to Dr Ward, our old family doctor, and that she was taking me to see him on the following Monday.
Dr Ward was a kindly soul, by now grey-haired, but he and Mum talked about me as though I wasn’t sitting in the room with them. I didn’t want to have to talk with anyone, but I resented them talking and making arrangements about me. Their conversation was in a sort of shorthand, leading me to believe that they had already had several discussions about me.
‘An abortion, well, it’s possible, even at this late date, but it’s dangerous. I don’t think that’s the way for her to go.’
‘Yes, I agree with you, Doctor. But I understand there are papers coming up now, a court-ordered abortion, which she might want to consider.’
‘Vitamins. She needs vitamins. I’ll give you a list of some things to get for her. She’s very underweight, but I’m sure now she’s home, you’ll be looking after that.’ And fin
ally, to me, ‘lust hop up on that couch, Roberta, so I can examine you. And you could step outside, if you would, please, Mrs Patterson.’
When Mum returned after the physical examination, they started again.
‘The baby could be put out for adoption. But, of course, you know the orphanage is full of coloured children. Nobody wants them, poor little things.’
‘Yes,’ replied Mum, ‘and we’ll have to think about that when her time comes.’
It was obvious to me that they were going to make all the decisions for me, a situation I felt I had no control over, even if I wanted to.
‘She’s asleep all the time, Doctor. That isn’t normal, is it?’
‘Her situation isn’t normal, Mrs Patterson. No doubt she’s having some sort of mental problem, which is not surprising in her situation. But I’m not an expert on that. You’re to see that she gets half an hour of exercise every day. Outside. She needs to walk in the fresh air for half an hour each day. I can make an appointment for her to see a psychiatrist if you like.’
‘No, I’m sure that won’t be necessary, Doctor. She’s just sleeping all the time. You’re right, she probably just needs the rest.’
As we were leaving, Dr Ward said to Mum, ‘Bring her back immediately if she has any problems. Otherwise, I’ll see her in four weeks, and after that every two weeks, and in the last month, every week. There’ll be no cost. It’s the least I can do.’
‘No,’ said Mum, ‘we can pay. I’d rather pay. I appreciate the thought, but have the nurse draw up a schedule of payments.’
Arthur was waiting outside to drive me home. Mum, when she arrived home that afternoon, woke me to show me a few pieces of fabric she had bought.
‘I’m going to make you a couple of blouses, big loose tops that gather in just below the hip. Everyone’s wearing them now, they’re the latest style. And then you’ll be able to walk in the street like anybody.’
When I woke up there were two big blouses hanging up on a peg on the wall. I immediately hated them with a vengeance.
Mum also took me to a dentist. ‘Babies sap all your calcium. You have to lose a tooth with each pregnancy so the baby can have all the calcium it needs.’
She and the dentist decided which tooth they were going to pull, and Mum waited outside while the dentist yanked it out. The physical pain was somehow a relief to me, as, for a few hours anyway, it gave me something to think about other than the pain which was in my head and in my heart.
For the next three months I slept, fighting demons and nightmares, waking in the night crying, my pillow soaked with tears. Grief kept me choked up much of the time.
Dellie, at fifteen, had a job at Woolworths Supermarket and was the first coloured person to be employed by them in Townsville. She started as a shelf packer, but soon impressed her bosses with her intelligence and charm, and they trained her to work on the checkout, dealing directly with the public. This was a real coup.
She also had a boyfriend, and Mum was delighted. She didn’t want all her daughters turning into ‘old maids’, she said. She was going to let her get engaged when she turned sixteen.
Arthur was still involved with the soccer teams, and players sometimes came and sat around the house waiting for him. Leonie was learning to be a coach, which pleased Mum very much. The number of young lads who want to play soccer has more than doubled since Leonie started showing up on the field,’ she told me proudly. Leonie was thirteen. She and her friends became used to what Leonie called my ‘ghosting’, as I quietly appeared and disappeared on my occasional rounds between my bed and the outside toilet.
‘One of the players wants to take you to the pictures,’ Mum said when she woke me for our afternoon walk around the block. ‘Have a rest and then get ready. He’ll be here just after six. He’ll take you on the six-forty bus into town.’
George Dean, a tall newly arrived Englishman with short cropped hair, arrived that evening. Mum pushed me out the door with him, whispering to me that I wasn’t to be rude. ‘Talk to him,’ she said, ‘and don’t go on with any more of your sulkiness.’
George came every week for a few weeks, and when we arrived at the theatre I’d put my head on his shoulder and go to sleep. The bus we caught back to the house was the last run, the ‘picture bus’. Mum would give him a cup of tea and then he would trot off into the night, running all the way back to his home in town. ‘Good exercise, keeps me fit for soccer,’ he told us, as he bolted off.
One day, after my appointment with Dr Ward, Mum said she wanted us to have a cup of tea and a talk before she put me on the bus to go home. She’d bought a cot, she said, and it would be delivered that afternoon. But that wasn’t the good news, she added. The good news was that George Dean had asked her if he could marry me!
‘And what did you say?’ I inquired, shocked that such a puzzling thing could have happened and I knew nothing about it.
Well,’ said Mum, ‘I told him you were having a baby. He hadn’t noticed, you see. Your little stick legs and arms are so deceptive, and although the doctor says you’re going okay, you seem to be carrying the baby so far towards the back that you don’t look pregnant at all, especially in the blouses I made for you. Anyway, he said it didn’t matter, that he’d look after the child as though it were his own. And he’s coming out this afternoon to talk to you about it too.’
I got up and walked out, caught the bus home and climbed back into bed. Some of the nightmares I was having didn’t seem half as bad as some of the things that were really happening around me.
The cot arrived soon after I’d gone to bed, and I called out to the man just to leave it on the verandah. A few hours later, George Dean arrived, and when I got up to open the door, I could tell from the shock on his face that, until he saw that cot standing there, he hadn’t really believed my mother.
I told him that Mum would be home soon and he could talk to her. Then I left him sitting in the lounge room and went back to bed.
When she came home from work, Mum came in and shook me. ‘Get up. Get up this minute. That poor man’s sitting out there, breaking his heart to speak to you, and you won’t even get out of bed to talk to him.’
I put my walking-around-the-block clothes on, as Mum suggested, and George and I walked around the block. ‘No, George, I won’t marry you. I’m sorry. I’m grateful, but no, I don’t love you, in fact, I don’t care about anything or anyone right now.’
‘But you’ll grow to. I’ll look after you. I’ll do everything for you. You’ll never want for a thing. I’m making good money, and in a short time we could afford a home. I’ll buy you a ring. We can get married now, before the baby arrives, and everyone will think it’s mine. I don’t mind. Actually, it would be great.’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t think you know how sick I am of everything. Please go away and leave me alone.’
Mum was furious. A perfectly good man, she said, and not only had I let him get away but I’d sent him away. Did I have any idea how hard it is to find a good husband? One who wouldn’t beat me up? One who would agree to take on a bastard child? Didn’t I have any sense?
My afternoon walks became an ordeal, with Mum seizing them as an opportunity to give me ‘a good lecture’. ‘Somebody has to talk sense to you, Roberta. You seem to have lost all the brains you used to have.’
It was time for me to snap out of it, she said over and over. My gloom was affecting the whole house. I had to stop thinking about myself and think of others. ‘Think about your poor sisters, they’re hardly game to raise their voices in their own house. They’re only young, and they don’t know what’s going on. Leonie even asked me if you were dying.
‘And think of this baby you’ve got coming. This little mite hasn’t done you any harm. You start taking an interest in it, you hear!’
She bought more fabric and began sewing tiny baby’s clothes. She bought fancy-work cottons and told me I had to spend half an hour every day embroidering them. She ironed transfers of little flowers on the tops o
f the dresses and nightgowns and gave them to me to sew. To avoid her wrath I stitched one. When she came home from work and saw that the little flowers were all black and the leaves a dark blue, she scolded me and took all the dark coloured cottons away and hid them in her room.
She bought nappies in packets of a dozen, and layettes, and crotcheted bootees. She laid all these things out in a cupboard in my room. She bought a new mattress for the second-hand cot and sewed small sheets and a mosquito net, and when she thought it looked wonderful, she put it in my room too.
My dreams grew worse, nightmares often linked together, one hot on the heels of another. The same grotesque figures popped up in most of them, and I even began to become familiar with these demons:
I am sitting on the floor of a deep canyon. I know it’s deep because I can see a fair way up the walls and there is no light anywhere. The air is full of agony. The agony manifests itself in sounds, awful sounds which go on relentlessly.
Near me, a demon is sitting on a rock. He is wearing nothing but he’s very hairy, and the skin on his round face is somehow layered in folds. His teeth are stained. He’s talking to me but I have my hands over my ears. I can tell he is getting angry; evil eyes—the eyes I remember so well from my living nightmare—begin to strain out of his head.
I jump up and try to scale the wall in order to escape. Pieces of shale rain down on me as I scramble and claw at the rockface. I reach a very narrow ledge and perch there, crouched and making myself as small as I can so that I can’t be seen. From somewhere behind me I hear dogs, big dogs, barking and baying and gnashing their teeth.
A whooshing sound from above captures my attention. A large piece of rock has dislodged from the wall and is plummeting towards me. It is growing larger and larger as it hurtles down, and it feels as if there is nothing I can do to get out of its path.
Sometimes I woke up here, but at other time the dream continues;
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