Snake Cradle

by Roberta Sykes

He was clutching a gift for the baby and wearing an extremely embarrassed look on his face.

  ‘I went out to your house looking for you, and they told me you were here. I couldn’t believe it. You didn’t look at all like you were having a baby. But when I thought about it on the way in, I remembered you couldn’t jump up out of the chair. At the pub, remember?’

  Now it was my turn to be embarrassed at being discovered in the maternity hospital.

  ‘What do you want? What are you doing here?’

  He looked around, pulled a chair around from the other side of the bed and sat down. He put his hand over mine on the cover.

  ‘You’re going to need friends now, and I’d like to be your friend, if you’ll let me. That’s all.’

  I pulled the sheet up over my head, so that he wouldn’t see the tears which I felt welling up in my eyes and spilling over. I felt that I didn’t deserve a friend, I had somehow attracted evil and therefore had become evil myself.

  He sat there in silence for a while, then asked, ‘Do you want me to go? I’ll go if you want me to.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, don’t forget about me, because I’ll be back.’

  When it was time to be discharged, Arthur came to the hospital to fetch me. Mum, he said, had had a bit of an accident, nothing major, but she hadn’t been able to come.

  I’d been given a list of things I was required to buy from the chemist. Arthur stopped the car outside the store, and I thrust the baby upon him so that I could walk in quickly. Bottles, teats, lactogen, sugar of milk—it took me a while to locate them because all these things were strange to me. When I carried them back to the car, I found Arthur in a great panic. The baby, he said, was ‘snuffling’, and he was afraid of the sound; scared the child was choking or something, I was glad then to have held the baby during his feeds in the hospital and to have had the opportunity to get a little used to the noises and gurgles of a newborn infant.

  Mum had somehow dropped a boiling hot pot of tea into her lap, and was very badly burnt across her thighs. Despite the pain, she thought it was a bonus because she could stay home from work and help look after the baby.

  Help? She completely took over the child, and I was able to climb right back into my bed. She put him in a box on the dinner table near her, so that she could keep a constant eye on him from wherever she was. I resumed sleeping between eighteen and twenty hours a day, but I found that the demons had waited at the house for me to return and plagued my dreams constantly. Mum didn’t mind me sleeping all day now because she had something much better to occupy her time. If I was out of the way, so much the better. But a week or so later, her burns healed and she had to return to work.

  Mum had been pestering me to name the child. ‘I’m getting tired of calling him “Boy”. Give him a name or I will. I have to take his birth registration papers into the registry office and they must have something on them.’

  I felt this child had been foisted upon me; I’d had no real role in his arrival, and wanted a name that somehow projected that. I also wanted a name which might evoke for him from the spirit world the strength and power he would need to survive in this overwhelmingly white racist society. I thought of the only child I’d heard of whose mother had played no sexual role in his conception, and told Mum, ‘I’m going to call him “Jesus”.’

  ‘You are not! No, I absolutely will not have it.’ Her face puffed up with rage.

  ‘Jesus is a good name, and a fairly common name in South America, too.’

  This child does not live in South America! He must have an Australian name. He’d be taunted unmercifully at school and throughout his life. Those South Americans called Jesus who come to Australia to live change their names to things like Peter or John. Have you ever met anyone who said his name was Jesus?’

  She brought home baby name books, and made lists from magazine stories and from novels she’d read at some time, I said she could name him anything she liked, the whole thing was becoming a terrible bother to me. I’d already picked a name and she’d ridiculed it.

  She took the papers in and got an extension for lodging the baby’s first name. With the heat off now, a name came to me as if in a dream, in the same way my poems came to me, and I got up and wrote it down. Russel. In the morning, when I showed her the name, Mum said, ‘That’s not how you spell Russell. My maiden name was Russell, and it’s spelt with two l’s, not one.’

  ‘He’s not named after your maiden name, Mum. I didn’t even know it was your maiden name. This child is a single “I” Russel. His name will attract the right spirits for him, because the spirits told me what to name him.’

  I had few dreams, only nightmares, and they came as often and were even more disturbing than before. Mum frequently came and took Russel out of his cot to sleep in her room. She said I was upsetting him, screaming and yelling out all the time.

  One night, the main dream started playing itself out again:

  I was sitting on the floor of a deep cavern. The demon was there, trying to talk to me. My hands were over my ears. Instead of scrambling up to scale the wall, I was too tired and I continued to sit. Through my hands, I could hear what the demon was saying. He was trying to get me to agree with something, and to somehow be tied to him. if I didn’t, there was going to be worse in store for me.

  I was looking at the floor, and the floor was solid. I suddenly knew that I was on the bottom now, the rock-solid bottom; there was nowhere else left to fall. A sense of peace came over me, and when I took my hands from my ears there was silence. I had struck no deals, and yet there was peace. I started to get to my feet and realised I was weightless. I was so light that I began to float upwards of my own accord and without any effort from me. I floated past the shelf from which I was always knocked by a falling rock, and when I floated even higher, I saw the big brown and black mastiffs. They were in a cave, baying from behind a solid glass window that was stretched across the entrance. I could see their teeth in their snarls as they heavily hurled themselves, over and over, at the glass wall between us, but not a sound from them reached my ears.

  As I floated, my body started turning around, slowly at first, much like a corkscrew being twisted out of a cork. At the same time, I began to see daylight filtering down from the top of the long tunnel I was in. The spinning grew a little faster, then a little more, until I experienced almost the same sense of vertigo and euphoria I’d previously got from choking myself around the neck. As the daylight became stronger I opened my eyes, and was surprised to find myself awake.

  After I had this dream, the nightmares stopped, as suddenly and inexplicably as they’d begun. I remained suspicious that they’d return as soon as I let my guard down.

  During my waking hours, I still felt bad and worthless. I wasn’t eating much; I felt I didn’t deserve food, so my energy level was often very low.

  One morning I woke up and the baby was in his cot. He was lying on his stomach, facing towards me, with his eyes open. Mum had told me that small babies can’t really see yet, as the nerves in their eyes have not fully developed.

  The baby smiled, arching his back to do so. He couldn’t be smiling at me, I thought, because I was across the other side of the room and he couldn’t possibly even see me. I sat up in the bed and moved from one side of it to the other. He followed me with his eyes, his head held steady. So I got up and left the room.

  The experience embarrassed me because, for the first time, I’d felt there was somebody else in the room with me. Until then, his presence had been about as remarkable as a dent in the paintwork or a picture on the wall. Now I felt a real person was in there and the whole dynamics in the room were changed.

  Whether he was asleep or awake, I began to feel his presence all the time. Awake, he watched me constantly, twisting himself about in the cot to enable himself to do so. When I looked over he’d catch my eye, and smile. A gummy but increasingly delighted smile, it was obvious he was pleased to see me.

  Eventually, I be
gan to take him out of the cot and bring him onto the bed to look at him. He’d lay there happily, waving small hands and feet in the air, and sometimes even quietly falling asleep. Whenever he could, he’d catch my eye and try to engage me in his gaze. I would often lay on the other side of the bed, staring at the ceiling, preoccupied with the turmoil of the awful things that passed through my head. Yet suddenly, I would find that, almost of its own accord, my hand had reached out to touch him to make sure he was still there, that he hadn’t moved towards the edge of the bed. When I turned my head, he’d look at me and beam.

  The child had separated himself from the nightmare and become an entity in his own right. I had begun to care about him despite myself.

  12

  Mum came into my room one afternoon and said the police had been to see her at work. The police in Brisbane had begun to schedule the court cases.

  My first thought was that I couldn’t afford to go back to Brisbane because I had very little money. I had not given any consideration to money in all this time. Earlier, Mum had told me that the Department of Social Services gave unmarried women an allowance to cover them for six weeks before and after the birth of their children, and she made an appointment for me to go in to see them. ‘Your visit is a formality, I’ve already told them your circumstances,’ she’d said, which turned out not to be the case when I got there. I was grilled at the counter by several clerks, within hearing of the other clients, about who the father of the baby was. This experience upset and embarrassed me.

  Mum always got me to sign the Social Services cheques when they arrived, then she would cash them and buy food and whatever else I needed, as well as everything in preparation for the baby. Whenever I thought about the cost to her, I was overwhelmed with guilt because she was still having to rise early and leave the house at daylight to start her job, boiling up dirty laundry in a ramshackle lean-to at the back of a hotel.

  The police will issue you with a travel warrant, and they’ll give me one, too, so I can go with you,’ Mum told me. ‘The court will also pay you a daily allowance to appear, and we’ll stay at Aunty Glad’s house, so that’ll be enough.’

  Then I began to worry about going to the court. Would I still remember the faces? What would I be asked? The memories were very strong but they appeared to me only in nightmares and flashbacks; I was able to keep them at bay when I was in control. Now I had to prepare myself to rake them all out in broad daylight, and found I couldn’t even bear the thought of doing this.

  Mum carefully picked out the few clothes I was to take, and packed for herself, me and the baby. We caught the train for the long journey, and Aunty Glad was at the station to meet us when we arrived.

  I was glad to see the familiar detective. However, probably because Mum was with me and he thought I no longer needed him to be so supportive, he was very businesslike. As he’d predicted, it had been impossible to trace any of the others involved. Even one of the five whom I’d identified had had the charges against him dropped through lack of collaborating evidence of his guilt of the more serious offences.

  The detective told me that each of the four men charged was to appear first in the Magistrate’s Court, and if the magistrate found the men had a case to answer, they would be tried in the Supreme Court. This meant that I would have to make eight court appearances. In between these cases, unless they were scheduled for consecutive days, Mum and I were to be issued with travel warrants to enable us to go to and from Townsville.

  The Magistrate’s Court was on the second floor of an old wooden building, with peeling paint and a verandah on which I had to wait. Mum and Aunty Glad were allowed into the court, but as I was involved in the case, I wasn’t permitted to hear anyone else’s evidence.

  Mum or Aunty Glad sat with me most of the time, but when the decisions were being made in the court, they both wanted to be present and left me sitting alone, looking after the baby. Russel was also not allowed to be taken into the court, we were told, because the defendants’ solicitors would claim that I was trying to manipulate the court into feeling sorry for me instead of concentrating on the justice of the case. The only way I found out what the verdicts were was when Mum, Aunty Glad or one of the detectives came out at the end to tell me.

  Three Magistrate’s Court appearances went well. I was asked very few questions as, no doubt, the prosecutor had already outlined the case against the defendant and all I had to do was substantiate it. So, apart from having to force myself back into the terror of that fateful night, nothing more occurred to add to my trauma. It was embarrassing to be on the verandah when the defendants were being walked into court by their lawyers, but once I was inside, I had other people, such as the magistrate, solicitors and the court attendants, to look at. This meant that I was able to ignore the man in the dock, while still appearing cooperative, if and when the defendant or his lawyer looked at me.

  At the end of each hearing we were taken to an office where I signed a form and received a court appearance fee. Ironically, although not a lot of cash, these payments amounted to more money than I’d received from any of the jobs I’d held. I was pleased to be able to pass most of it over to Mum to help repay her for the wages she was losing by accompanying me, as well as the huge expenditure she’d incurred as a result of having had to look after all my needs during my pregnancy. Even after this, I still had a couple of pounds left to spend on Russel and myself.

  A nerve-racking ritual for us all—Mum, Aunty Glad, the police, the defendant, defendant’s lawyer, and sometimes members of the defendant’s family, as well as, occasionally, the men who were introduced to me as the prosecutors—was having to be together on the verandah at the same time every morning, during the lunch break when suddenly everyone came pouring out of the court, again after lunch, and yet again when court finished in the afternoon. The detective cautioned me against glancing towards anyone from ‘the other side’ in case anything could be made of my look. He said the defendants’ solicitors would tell them the same thing, and that if they were smart, they would do as they were told.

  So I, and everyone else, was surprised during the hearing for the tall blond man. When the court recessed for lunch, he stepped away from his solicitor and his group so quickly that no one could stop him, and he came towards me. But Mum was even quicker. She was beside me already when he stopped, leaned over me and said, ‘Can I see the baby?’ Russel was wrapped in a bunny rug, asleep on my lap, and the man looked only at him, not at me when he spoke. His solicitor was there in a flash, dragging on his arm, pulling him away. We could hear him being heavyied—‘What did you think you were doing?’ and ‘You want to act guilty? Well, that was a fool’s way of doing it!’—as his party closed in around him and escorted him down the stairs. A man on a rape charge wanting to see the baby was an unheard of admission of guilt.

  Mum, Aunty Glad and the detectives were all scandalised, as no doubt was everyone from the man’s own camp. During lunch, Mum and Aunty Glad couldn’t stop talking about the implications of his actions. When we got back to Aunty Glad’s house later that afternoon, they were still burning with outrage, and shared this titbit with the few people whom they had made privy to what was going on.

  Just before the final hearing in the Magistrate’s Court, the detective told me to brace myself, because the fourth man had decided to defend himself. Did that mean he could ask me questions himself, not through a lawyer, I asked? Yes, we’re sorry, that is the case, I was told. This was, of course, the main assailant, now known to be a violent criminal, who had turned in the front seat of the car to knock me out and, later, stomped on my head with his boots and left me for dead. Then he had been inadvertently released on bail. The thought of having to endure him even speaking to me, as part of the process of justice, terrified and sickened me.

  The fourth hearing was a great ordeal, and I felt as if I’d really earned the court appearance fee, not so much for what had been asked of me in court, which had turned out to be little, but because of th
e anxiety I’d experienced. I was completely unnerved by having to look at my interrogator, a situation which the magistrate alleviated by telling me I didn’t have to look at him. I could give my answers to the bench instead, as long as I spoke loudly enough for the defendant to hear me.

  Mum and I spent a lot of time on the train, going backwards and forwards on the two thousand mile return journey. Then, while talking to the detective one day, I learned that we could have flown back and forth, but Mum had refused air-travel warrants.

  So, the next time she was preparing to make the trip, I asked her why we weren’t going by plane. I’d never been on a plane, but the idea of spending a couple of hours—as opposed to a couple of days—travelling to these cases, while attending to the needs of a small baby, was very appealing to me.

  ‘Go by plane?’ Mum roared at me. ‘Are you crazy? When I was a little girl, men were jumping off chicken coops with bits of wood strapped to their arms, trying to fly! And now you think I ought to go up there in one of their contraptions? No fear! We’re going by train, and that’s the end of it. I’ll hear no more about it.’

  At our first appearance at the Supreme Court, we were met by the detectives, who were waiting for us outside. They were more neatly and smartly dressed than they had been before. When they took us into the vestibule, where I was to spend my time waiting, we saw a number of other men, none of whom I instantly recognised, all neatly and soberly attired. The detective introduced them to Mum and me, and it turned out that the group included the milkman whom I had flagged down, the vegetable gardener who’d given me a lift, doctors, and others connected with the case. Most were obliged to sit in the vestibule until called to give evidence. When those who were allowed into the court had gone inside, both the milkman and the vegetable gardener, at different times, approached me to tell me how much they wished I had spoken out at the time. They would have taken me to a police station, and the milkman especially was deeply regretful that he had left me by the roadside when he’d gone off to deliver his milk round.