Gifts of the Peramangk

by Dean Mayes

  The houses boasted perfectly manicured gardens, clipped nature strips, lush green lawns. A local legend told of a competition that was conducted amongst the residents where they would prepare and present their gardens as enthusiastically as anything put on at the Chelsea Flower Show. Judges assessed the gardens accordingly and awarded prizes for the best. Neighbours looked out for neighbours. Community spirit was bountiful.

  With the passing of time, the decline in industry, the disappearance of jobs, the economic rationalism of the modern era, a new paradigm was created. Creeping unemployment was imperceptible at first but slowly and surely, as one generation birthed another, it became so entrenched that now children knew nothing of the notion of work because their parents—if they had any—had themselves never worked. Welfare spread like a cancer. Social dysfunction replaced the nuclear family, crime and drugs and despair seeped in to accompany the decay.

  The misfits, the poor, the down trodden.

  All of them living here. All of them existing.

  But barely…

  “Kick it long!”

  The scuffed, red leather football sailed high through the air, reverse spinning slowly as it completed a beautiful, parabolic arc. At one end of the street stood a motley band of children, boys and girls all rough housing with one another, jockeying for a position to receive the lofty projectile as it floated toward them, while at the other end, a similar group watched the football on its journey down the street.

  The children were a mixture of boys and girls, Caucasian and Aborigines, teens and children. They had been playing on the street for hours, kicking the football back and forth as they sought to emulate their Australian Rules heroes. The group waiting to receive the ball was laughing and chattering excitedly, preparing themselves to launch into the air once the football came within their reach.

  Their clothing was as motley as the children themselves. Some of the boys wore the familiar jerseys of their favourite football teams. In Adelaide, there were only two national football teams and they were well represented here. The teal, black and white of Port Adelaide and the red, yellow and blue of the Adelaide Crows. Some of the children wore jerseys of both teams while the others wore a mixture of T-shirts bearing the images of the current crop of pop stars like Beyonce, Jay-Z, Eminem, Lady Gaga and Pink.

  The leather ball reached the zenith of its arc and then whistled downward. The taller children drew closer together, pushing and shoving more forcefully in readiness to receive it. The ball plunged through a gap—none of the outstretched hands came even close to touching it—and landed in the waiting arms of a girl whose eyes were shut fast until she felt the impact of leather on skin.

  There was a moment of silence as every eye turned toward the small scrap of a child who had seemingly emerged from nowhere and snatched the football into her grasp.

  Then the group erupted into enthusiastic cheers and claps, slapping her back in congratulation and grabbing her free hand, shaking it vigorously.

  The girl gazed down upon the football in her arm. Her jaw fell open in shock. Her face morphed into an expression of utter amazement. She was barely able to comprehend her sudden and unexpected achievement. One of the teen-aged boys lifted her up off the ground and, holding her aloft on his shoulder, turned several circles, bouncing her small frame up and down, before setting her down again.

  Eight year old Ruby Delfey beamed proudly and she hand passed the ball to that teen-aged boy who took it, stepped forward a few paces then dropped it onto his foot, punting it high and long toward the second group of children some twenty yards or so down the street.

  As she watched it sail high, Ruby spied a strapping, athletic teen-aged boy in amongst that group. He was shirtless, his rippling muscles and coffee brown skin glistening with sweat and he stood apart from the others, clapping his hands slowly and nodding admiringly in her direction. Her eyes met his and she directed her smile toward him now, a moment of silent affection between herself and her cousin, Jeremy.

  “Good mark, Ruby,” Jeremy complimented softly.

  Her wind-blasted, shoulder length hair, seemingly frozen in a dozen different directions was loosely tied back with a simple elastic band. Her large, dark eyes were worldly, expressing an intelligence and wisdom far beyond her tender years. She stood no more than perhaps four feet tall – not especially unusual for a child her age – but considering that she was only half a head taller than her five year old cousin beside her, she was, perhaps, a little on the petite side. Her delicate light brown skin was her most striking feature. It was flawless – unusually so. It was a talking point among her circle of family and friends. Though, unbeknownst to many of those very same people her skin was not completely without blemish.

  As Ruby watched the ball sail back down the street, she discreetly took the opportunity to step away from the group. As plucky as she was and outwardly equal in stamina to the older children, Ruby did her best to conceal her exhaustion. They had, after all, been out here on the street all day, playing in the warm sun with little respite. She took a moment to catch her breath, putting her hand to her chest to slow her breathing and her heartbeat. She could feel under the T-shirt she wore, that single blemish to her otherwise perfect skin—a singular, thin scar over her sternum – the remnant of a surgeon’s cut from when she was an infant to repair a hole in her heart.

  Before the others noticed her absence, Ruby quickly rejoined them as the ball came barrelling back down the street, bouncing crazily along the bitumen. The game continued on, back and forth, the children blissfully ignorant of anything else other than the favoured activity. Ignorant of the death metal blasting from the front window of number 27. Unaware of the stinking refuse pile in number 18, its wafting odour of rotting food and cat urine. Blind to a drunken duo—a father and son—bickering over a car hulk at number 24, all tools and beer and bad language.

  Ruby lived with her cousins, fifteen year old Jeremy, his eleven year old sister Asher—whom she stood beside now—and their five year old brother who they called “Minty” on account of his obsession with the sweet of the same name.

  On the porch of the red brick house at number 22, quietly watching over the children, sat an elderly woman on a battered kitchen chair with ripped upholstery on the seat back and rusted patches on the chrome legs.

  She watched, occasionally flicking ash from the end of a cigarette that she held in her nicotine stained fingers. Bringing it to her lips, she gave life to the freshly exposed ember and coughed, a hacking gag that forced her to hunch over. Her ill-fitting cotton dress hugged her larger frame up top and hung down over her legs, ending at the knees. The flip flops she wore on her cracked and dry feet were far too small—but she seemed oblivious. Her wild grey hair was messy and ungroomed and it framed a dark, leathery face that was heavily lined. Her eyes—one of which was a glass prosthetic—were sunken into the shadows under a prominent brow. A faded but mighty scar traversed over her left eye socket from her cheek to just below her brow. When she looked up, her left eye looked out at an odd angle. Her nose was at once typical of an Aboriginal woman, yet it was slightly thinner and more delicate than one would expect.

  She had been sitting on the porch for as long as the children had been playing in the street, content to watch them and smoke her cigarettes. A small can with a label for pear slices peeling away from it sat near her right foot, half filled with extinguished cigarette butts she added throughout the morning. Beside that sat a chipped china tea cup, half filled with milky tea, the tea bag string hanging over the side. Leaning up against the red brick of the house, was a worn and gnarled walking stick with a brass inlay on its handle.

  Occasionally she stood to get a better view of the children over the top of the pomegranate tree at the edge of the driveway. Her attention was drawn to two of the children in particular, her grandchildren Asher and Ruby. She watched them competing ferociously, occasionally wincing when either of them took a tumble on the unforgiving pavement. Then, as the football was kicked
long back to the other end of the street out of view, she would settle back on her rickety kitchen chair once more and doze in the afternoon sun.

  Though Virginia was now in her 67th year, she looked and felt much older. Time had not been kind to her. Her hands, once nimble and dexterous, were swollen now. They were slowly being consumed by arthritis. Her spine was similarly deteriorating and because of this, Virginia could no longer move as freely as she once did. Without the aid of the walking stick, Virginia was unsteady on her feet. Transient memory lapses, which she had previously dismissed, were now becoming more frequent and she was grappling with a recent diagnosis of mild dementia.

  Virginia lived here at her son’s home, with his wife and three children, along with Ruby—for whom Virginia was legal guardian. She and Ruby had moved out of the house Virginia owned and had lived in for most of her adult life, after an incident where she had put a saucepan to heat on the gas stove top and forgotten it. The resulting fire had gutted the entire kitchen and would have extended much further, had it not been for Ruby’s quick intervention. Ruby had single-handedly stopped the fire before it could spread.

  Though the house here was patently inadequate in size to accommodate this extended family, somehow they made it work.

  Both her son Rex and her daughter in law Belle were presently at work. Outwardly, Virginia was charged with looking after the children though, for most of the time, it was more the case that the children were caring for Virginia.

  The football floated high and came into view from the far end of the street on a trajectory that would have it land right at Virginia’s feet. As the children in the street watched it hawk-like, honing in on its target, all of them shouted out in their loudest voices.

  “Mark it, Nana!!”

  Virginia flinched and she lifted her head skyward as the ball dropped like a stone and bounced at her feet.

  “Bloody hell,” she grumbled under her breath, jumping in her seat once more as the football bounced crazily in front of her while she fumbled impotently where she sat in a vain attempt to lay a hand on the crazed projectile.

  Ruby skipped up the driveway and made a bee-line for the football, securing it in her grasp. She went over to her grandmother who was still collecting her frayed nerves. Ruby smiled broadly and reached out, placing a steadying hand on her grandmother’s arm.

  “Sorry, Nana. We thought you were watching.”

  Virginia looked at her granddaughter blankly for a moment. Then a grizzled smile spread across her lips.

  “Daydreaming again,” she answered softly, her aged voice barely cracking above a whisper.

  Virginia noticed beads of sweat glistening on Ruby’s brow and she lifted a hand to wipe them away.

  “I hope you’re bein’ careful out there. You know you gotta watch yourself with that heart of yours.”

  Ruby rolled her eyes discreetly in a ‘how many times have I heard this before’ expression.

  “I’m fine Nana,” Ruby stressed as she backed down from the porch and prepared to turn away back to the street.

  “Hmm…” Virginia grumbled disapprovingly. She pointed a gnarled finger at her granddaughter. “Don’t forget you’ve got a lesson this evening. We can’t have you exhausted for that, now can we. And I certainly don’t want you to damage those fingers of yours with that dashed football.”

  At the mention of ‘a lesson’ Ruby’s eyes brightened and she smiled broadly once more.

  “Oh don’t worry Nana. I’ll be fully up for it.”

  Ruby’s infectious grin soon cracked the disapproving facade of Virginia’s own expression and, eventually, the elderly woman smiled warmly in return.

  With that, Ruby turned away and trotted out onto the road, passing the ball over to one of the older boys as she rejoined them.

  On the porch, a still smiling Virginia leaned back in her chair and began humming the first notes of Spring from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

  That evening, the children sat at the kitchen table eagerly awaiting their dinner, watching Asher who stood on a wooden stool at the battered stove, tending to a large pan on the gas cook top. Asher was a willowy girl with two precisely fashioned plaited tails that hung down either side of her face so that they just brushed the tops of her shoulders. She possessed jewel-like green eyes that were ensconced behind a pair of glasses—a hand me down from Virginia who had discovered, quite by accident, that Asher’s poor eye sight was vastly improved with her own prescription. Thus, no one had actually gotten around to taking her to an eye doctor to have her eyesight assessed properly—not that they could afford it anyway.

  Asher stirred the beef stroganoff with a wooden spoon while Virginia prepared plates beside her, spooning out dollops of piping hot mashed potato from a larger saucepan, depositing fluffy white mounds onto each plate. Virginia hummed a tune as she served up the meal, occasionally glancing across at her granddaughter, inspecting her handiwork and smiling approvingly. Asher’s cooking had really come along of late and, though the recipes that she and her grandmother attempted were becoming increasingly challenging, Asher was proving herself more than capable every time. Virginia often said of Asher that she could go far as a chef, if she wanted to.

  Asher, for her part, smiled bashfully as she listened to the quaint little ditty from her grandmother. Asher often observed her grandmother humming like that for no reason at all and on the most random occasions. She had no idea what the tunes were, but they were light and happy tunes that made her feel safe—especially during those times when she didn’t feel safe at all.

  Virginia studied her family. Ruby and Minty were giggling at one another as they stole glances at Belle—the children’s mother, Ruby’s aunt—who sat at the end of the table, nodding off to sleep. A single tear-drop of saliva hung precariously from the corner of her lips and the children were wagering as to how long it was going to stay there before it broke free. Virginia frowned at the children momentarily then her attention drifted through the doorway where an audible racket spewed forth from the TV in the living room. Evidently, Jeremy was in there now lounging on the sofa, watching American wrestling.

  “Jeremy!” Virginia called out authoritatively. “Get yourself in here to the dinner table now. And turn that bloody racket off.”

  Belle shuddered in her chair at the old woman’s bellowing voice, disturbing the bead of saliva as she instinctively wiped at her face.

  Belle was still in her nurse’s aid uniform—a striped blue blouse, gold fob watch on the breast pocket, navy culottes. Though she was in her mid thirties, Belle appeared much older. Her dark hair was greying such at the temples, that it almost rivalled her elderly mother in law. She was thin, gaunt almost, with high cheek bones but leathery, tanned skin.

  Belle had worked her seventh straight shift at a local nursing home and the relentless hours were taking their toll. As an Enrolled Nurse, Belle was usually at the coalface of hard work. But recently she had been called upon to work additional overtime hours because of a staff shortage at the home and it was clear that she was struggling. She had barely spoken to the children this week. Usually, she would come home from work, stumble through a few mouthfuls of food before collapsing into bed in order to steal as much sleep as she could before having to get up early to do it all over again.

  Virginia leaned over to take a closer view of the stroganoff in the pot and she nodded approvingly once more.

  “Now—take that pepper and toss a couple more pinches into it. I reckon she’ll be just about ready.”

  Asher did so. Then, proudly, she and her grandmother delivered the dinner plates to the table, setting them down in front of Belle, Ruby and Minty then placing their own plates down along with Jeremy’s.

  Belle sat up straight in her chair and rubbed her nose with her hand. Both Ruby’s and Minty’s eyes went wide as they admired the hearty dish before them, licking their lips and arming themselves with mismatched cutlery.

  Virginia gave the children a warning glower, signalling for them to
wait while she looked through the doorway to the living room again.

  “Jeremy!” she thundered. “Get your bum in here now!”

  She waited, listening for movement in the other room and was rewarded when the noise from the television abruptly silenced and Jeremy appeared in the doorway. Virginia swatted the air with her hand near his right ear as he passed and cursed under her breath. Jeremy flashed her a dopey grin and took his place at the dinner table.

  Once they were all seated, Virginia glanced at Ruby and Minty and gave a subtle nod of her head. They instantly dove into their meal with gusto and Virginia chuckled softly. She nudged Asher beside her and smiled warmly.

  “You’ve done a marvellous job, dear,” she praised.

  Asher returned her smile.

  This was, perhaps, the best meal they had eaten all week. Fresh vegetables and quality meat were commodities the family could rarely afford. To eat such a salubrious meal as this was a treat indeed.

  Belle absently nudged a few morsels of meat around her plate but didn’t immediately eat any. Not until she realised that Asher was looking at her hopefully.

  Sensing her daughter’s eagerness for her opinion, Belle caught herself and quickly took in a mouthful.

  Finally she spoke.

  “I’m sorry love,” she offered apologetically. “I’m a million miles away. This is real good.”

  Virginia considered Belle disapprovingly.

  “How many more shifts is that place gonna make you work before you drop dead where you sit?”

  Belle rolled her eyes almost imperceptibly. She’d evidently heard this question before.

  “Only one more, Virgie. Then I’ve got a day off.”

  “A day!? Then what? Another seven day stretch to contend with? That’s not working—it’s bloody slavery.”