Grace Beside Me

by Sue McPherson

  When Mary was sixteen one of her brothers threw a stone that hit her top lip. The small scar became an asset. It made her look even more beautiful than before. Located where a beauty spot would sit, it gave her that raw sexiness of those beautiful film stars in the fifties. I think it makes her look a bit naughty but in a nice way, especially when she smiles.

  Mary was the eldest and always driven to make positive change, like with writing letters to the local paper about visiting the elderly, raising money for the RSPCA and, even today, working to stop child slavery in the diamond mines over in Africa. When Mary was eleven, she found a stash of grog under the house. Nan said she found a whole box full of long necks ready for her stepdad’s next drinking binge. She pulled out the bottles and threw them down the old pit toilet, never to be seen again. Her stepfather threw a mental and took out his frustration and anger on Mary’s mother. Mary ran to our house where she stayed with Nan and Pop for over a month before returning to her own home and family. One day I hope to be just as strong and intelligent as her.

  In a family of eight, Mary was the only one living the straight and narrow. After leaving school and getting top marks, she studied wine-making and worked in France for many years. She was a little Koorie girl from the bush who done good, real good. It’s all a bit funny really, given her stepfather lived most of his life in a drunken stupor and her brothers and sisters all have a taste for the foul-tasting gunk inside a bottle.

  One day Nan told me this story while we were making lamingtons.

  ‘Mary’s success is due to her father. Ruby, Mary’s mother, was like a sister to me. When Ruby was young she was very beautiful, just like Mary. She used to work with me at the Robertsons’ after we went through the homes together. Once a month on our days off Ruby and I used to visit the mission.’

  ‘Brungle or Yaven, Nan?’

  ‘Yaven. We’d walk, dance and sing the whole seven kilometres down Mission Road, over Poly Bridge and up past the cemetery. While visiting we would catch up with other Koorie family and friends like old Dora. You remember old Dora, Fuzzy? She was one of them people we used to visit. Dora, God love her, that’s another story. Remind me to tell you about her one day.

  ‘Anyway we were not the only ones visiting the mission. Once a week there was another visitor, the local doctor, who drove out to the mission and helped those who needed medical attention. This was unheard of back in those days, but thankfully for the mission people who were feelin’ sick, the doctor was a gift from above. Not only did Dr McNamarra genuinely care about Aboriginal people, he also looked quite at home amongst mission life. He was also young and rather handsome, if I say so myself.’

  ‘What did he look like, Nan?’

  ‘Well, let me think … he was a lovely gold colour, dark curly hair and he looked a little bit like your dad, now I think of it. He dressed proper, neat and clean. He had a pretty face, that one. Real handsome he was, and only a few years out of medical school.

  ‘It was general knowledge that the McNamarras were a very big pastoral family. They had a station somewhere close to the South Australian and New South Wales border. The family was wealthy. They also had a few skeletons in the closet. Black skeletons they reckon. The way they looked kept both blacks and whites talking.’

  ‘So, Nan, are you saying this doctor bloke was Koorie?’

  ‘I’m not sayin’ nothin’, girl, just that he had a look about him that was familiar.’

  ‘But what’s Mary got to do with this?’

  ‘Quiet and listen. Mary has a lot to do with this. Just bloody listen, then you’ll understand.’ Nan gave me her I’m-not-happy look before continuing. ‘Ruby had a boil on her leg, which wouldn’t heal. It was all manky like something you wouldn’t wish on your worsest enemy.’

  ‘Worst enemy, Nan. You mean worst enemy.’

  ‘Shhh, if I want to say worsest I can, I’m too old for you to be telling me how to talk.’

  ‘Sorry, Nan.’

  ‘One day while visiting the mission, we decided that Ruby should go and see the doctor up at the shed near the mission school. The shed was once part of an old dairy. It had a cement floor with a tap and an old kitchen sink made out of cement that sat in the corner. I think that if I remember right, the sink used to be painted dark green on the outside but over the years the paint had started to peel off. There was an old wooden table smack bang in the middle of the room that my old Uncle Harry made. And on that table was newspaper and an old kerosene lamp for light if it was needed.

  ‘In summer it was hot and in winter the cold went straight through to your ribs, a chill that ran through me insides right down to me little toe. There was a possum’s nest. Them possums would look out from the nest with their beautiful big eyes, wonderin’ what in the world was going on.’

  ‘Well, Nan, I don’t think that sounds like a good place for a doctor’s surgery.’

  ‘Yes well, it wouldn’t be good enough for Mrs M or old Mrs Robyns, God rest her soul, but it worked for us Koories who didn’t have the means to visit the town clinic. Things were different back then.

  ‘Listen, the shed, as it was known, was where Dr McNamarra set up his bush clinic. Ruby and Dr McNamarra met that day for the first time. It was all destined because it was love at first sight. Mind you, I told her she was gonna meet up with a lad while at the mission.’

  ‘How old was Ruby, Nan?’

  ‘Ruby had not long turned fifteen and the doctor was in his twenties.’

  ‘Fifteen! Oh Nan, Ruby was not that much older than me. That doctor was in his twenties. Oh Nan! Did they have sex?’

  ‘Settle down, girl, times were different, now do you want to hear the story or are ya gonna bugger around? And anyway, I told you, Fuzzy, sex or not, until you work out the fumbles you may as well do the washin’.’

  ‘Yes but Nan, fifteen, come on.’

  ‘Shhh, anyways I guess you know what happened next, Dr McNamarra was smitten by beautiful Ruby.’

  ‘Smitten.’

  ‘Look it up.’

  ‘Obsessed, Nan, He was obsessed.’

  ‘Bloody smitten, I said. Who’s tellin’ this story? Anyway her leg began to heal. Before long everyone knew he was seeing that young girl Ruby. White patients stopped goin’ to him. They didn’t like him seein’ a Koorie girl, even if she was beautiful and well trained.’

  ‘Oh Nan, that’s terrible’

  ‘Terrible or not, Fuzzy, that’s how it was. Ruby got pregnant. She told me Dr McNamarra had asked her to marry him. He did everythin’ like he should of, real proper, just like in the movies.’

  Nan went quiet.

  ‘Yeah, Nan, what happened next?’

  ‘He was told he’d be disowned by his family if he got married.’

  ‘As if he listened to them. If I loved someone, family wouldn’t dare tell me what I should do.’

  ‘No one exceptin’ your Nan.’

  ‘But, Nan, it’s not right.’

  ‘A lot of things aren’t right, Fuzzy, but that’s what happened.

  ‘Mr McNamarra came down to see what his son had got himself into. He was a big man, not as dark as his son, but the features were there, that’s for sure, real stuck up. Only days later Dr McNamarra was transferred down to Victoria somewhere. Ruby was given money to help with an abortion.’

  ‘Oh Nan.’

  ‘Well, me girl, that’s what happened, no word of a lie and to add insult to injury a few more dollars was thrown in. To this day I believe that the extra money was to keep Ruby quiet. And that was what she did for the rest of her life, she kept quiet.

  ‘Ruby didn’t see Dr McNamarra again. He later married a proper white girl with money from another big property in the Northern Territory.’

  ‘Nan, that’s bad, that doctor was weak. He didn’t deserve Ruby, I don’t reckon. Fancy him listening to his dad like that, hasn’t he got any b––’

  ‘Watch your tongue, you’re not too old for that cake of soap out in the laundry, you forget how it t
astes?’

  ‘No, Nan, I remember. It just makes me angry, that’s all. So what happened next?’

  ‘Well, Ruby, her life was never the same. She chose to keep her baby, the right decision, I believe. Mary was born in a day of sunshine on the side of the road fifteen minutes from the local hospital. Pop reckons that when she was born, young Mary gained strength from the earth and the hot summer’s day and that’s why the girl has done good. He also reckons that being born on the side of the road would be the reason why Mary’s always travellin’.’

  ‘Yep, I reckon he’s right there, because she is always roaming around. France one year, Italy and America the next.’

  ‘It wasn’t until Ruby met up with another guy not long out of the army that things started to change for her. Seven children later, four sons and three daughters, broken ribs, deafness, a broken jaw and numerous black eyes became everyday occurrences in dear Ruby’s life.’

  ‘Yeah, I know, Nan, I don’t think I ever saw Ruby without a black or swollen eye and I remember now, the day I lost my last baby tooth was the day they found Ruby.’

  ‘Yep, that was the day. She was sitting on her favourite kitchen chair, slumped over the table with her head resting on her old Bible, dead. Doctors couldn’t work out why she died as everything inside looked healthy … Do you remember the funeral, Fuzzy?’

  ‘Yeah, Nan, I remember, it was cold.’

  ‘It was cold all right, cold inside and out. At the funeral, apart from Mary and two of her brothers, the rest of Ruby’s children were either locked up or drugged to the eyeballs, unable to get their shit together. The funeral was big, but like I said only three of her eight children bothered to say goodbye. It’s a sad story. A bloody sad, sorry story, that’s all it is.’

  ‘Wow, Nan, I don’t reckon I needed to hear that one, how depressing.’

  ‘Stories can be all kinds, good or bad. If you don’t hear the painful ones, that there spirit of yours gets tricked into thinkin’ there’s only good in the world. Thinkin’ that way is gammon, a lie. We bring you up so you have a better understandin’ of all things. That way you will be able to connect with people easier. You will be more empathetic to others goin’ through tough times, includin’ people less fortunate, people with illness either physical or mental, people who make wrong choices, who drink or take drugs. Empathy, tolerance and love will make you a good, proper person.’

  Nan becomes quiet, lost in her thoughts. Tears gather in her eyes. I grab a tissue from the box on the windowsill and hand it to her.

  ‘My dear friend Ruby. Grace be beside her always, but she forget … I miss her, Fuzzy … she was a good, good friend.’

  ‘I know, Nan.’

  Crazy

  The thing is, everyone has a story. As ordinary as you feel your life might be, once you start to look into each family member over the years, your story, just like mine, will begin retelling itself. I reckon you will be surprised with the end result. And it’s not just family members that are part of your story – friends, acquaintances and even people you just find along the way can be major contributors.

  One person I have yet to mention here is our neighbour Thomas Edgar Stanley the Third. We just call him Yar, don’t ask me why, Pop gave him the name years before I was born. He must be OK with it because he always answers us when we call him and he gets on really well with us all. I could write a whole book on Yar, I tell you, he’s a real funny bugger.

  Yar lives over our back fence and his front yard is on Trans Street. His next-door neighbour on his right side is Mr Furfy and on the left side is Mrs Choo. Next door to Mrs Choo lives Yar’s wife, Jilly, that’s right, his wife lives separately. They have been married for years but for some reason only known to them, they just can’t live in the same house together. Jilly is half normal but clearly she is also infected with the same crazy gene as her husband. Yar and Jilly go shopping together every Friday afternoon, sharing the same car and the same grocery bill. It is nothing to see them walk hand in hand along the main street, obviously still in love. Now Mrs Choo, who lives in between the husband and wife, has been keen to move to another street for the last ten years. She insists she is going to be put in the funny farm if she continues living among the daily antics of Jilly and Yar. We just laugh at her.

  Both husband and wife are highly educated. Jilly has a Masters in Psychology and Yar has a Doctorate in Engineering and Electrical Sciences. Both work from home writing for universities. On a normal day, Yar can be found walking around his beautiful garden. Like Nan, Yar is gifted. He has a spirit named Bruce that follows him around wherever he goes. He is an educated spirit. I know this because Yar is always throwing big words around when he is in full conversation with him. Most of the time Yar and Bruce get on really well, but some days Yar can be heard arguing and yelling at Bruce, ‘You pompous arse. Clearly you don’t appreciate my work. Bruce, I think it’s best you leave.’ Half an hour later Yar is having a normal conversation, it seems like there has been some type of truce.

  The good thing about this is that if I’m stuck with my homework I ask Yar for help and, if he can’t, which is rare, Bruce is always available with the right answer.

  Not only does Yar speak to dead people he has this funny thing about wearing purple on your feet when you walk into his house. In his front room, the enclosed verandah, there is a chest of drawers, and inside is every size sock you can find in the colour purple. If you want to go inside for a yarn or a cuppa you must wear a pair of purple socks on your feet. Even if you are a tradie or a doctor on a home visit you must wear purple on your feet. In summer you are allowed to wear purple thongs, purple flip-flops or purple sandals. But under no circumstances do you wear anything else or Yar will yell and scream and kick you out. And don’t expect to be welcomed again.

  One day not long after my tenth birthday I asked the question,

  ‘Yar.’

  ‘Yes, Fuzz girl.’

  ‘Why does everyone have to wear these purple socks on their feet?’

  ‘Dear girl, I thought you of all the people would know why,’ he says impatiently.

  ‘Nah, I have no idea.’

  ‘It’s because of the fairies.’ He pauses for a minute. ‘Can’t you see them?’ he says while scanning the floor around where we sit.

  I look closely, even squinting my eyes. ‘Nah, can’t see a thing,’ I finally say.

  ‘Well, don’t you worry about that, Fuzz girl, you will. And the reason we must wear purple on our feet in this house is because head fairy Natasha says this is what we must do. She can be very strong willed, Natasha, and she runs a very tight ship inside this house and out in the garden. To keep the peace and everything running smoothly, this is the rule. She simply will not tolerate anybody who does not adhere to the rules.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, as I look under the table for any possible hint of fairy life. Whenever I go over for a visit I always look around real careful just in case I catch a glimpse.

  So there you go, that’s the fairy thing. Yar also has the maddest dress sense you could ever imagine. He owns a lovely purple tutu and once or twice a week he puts it on over the top of whatever he is wearing. Most times it’s a t-shirt and a pair of faded flared jeans with a crease ironed right down the centre of the leg. Sometimes he even wears the tutu down the street shopping with Jilly. She doesn’t care, doesn’t have a worry in the world. If you are lucky, when one of the local lads offers a wolf whistle Yar will deliver a lovely little ballerina dance. Most of the town is used to Yar, but if you were an outsider I am sure you would have a pink fit, just like my Aunt Nell.

  One summer, when Aunt Nell was up for a visit, she was helping Nan prepare dinner while I was in the lounge room, finishing off school work. Aunt was peeling potatoes at the sink when something caught her eye. I heard it first, she gasped a big heap of air and opened the kitchen window, I assume for a clearer look. Poor Aunt got an eyeful alright. There, pruning roses down in his back garden, was Yar. He was wearing a pink sequined tutu,
orange leg warmers on each leg and an old World War One battle helmet on his head. To us it was just the usual Yar, to poor Aunt the whole experience was like a trip to the circus. I should have been concentrating on homework but of course I have big ears so I had to stop and listen. This opportunity was priceless.

  ‘Oh … sweet Mary and Joseph … Sis, sis, you gotta come here quick,’ she said, waving her hands to get Nan’s attention.

  ‘What’s the matter now?’ asked Nan, unaware of the show outside.

  ‘There’s a fuckin’ nutter prunin’ roses over at your neighbour’s house,’ she almost yelled. ‘You’d better come and ’ave a look!’

  I heard Nan move and then her laugh, a real hearty laugh.

  ‘Oh Nell, you old fool, you just got an eyeful of Yar, that’s all. He lives there.’ She picked up another potato. ‘He’s a bit funny but he has big fulla heart.’ Nan laughed. ‘I can take you down and introduce you if you like?’

  Aunt looked at Nan then back at Yar who was now bending over with tutu fluttering upwards in waves revealing bright yellow bloomers.

  ‘You won’t do any such thing. What man prunes the roses wearin’ a fuckin’ tutu thing and orange leg things on his legs and that stupid hat on his head? Who does that, Tilly? You live next door to a nutter, sis. He’s nothin’ but a bloody nutter.’

  By this time I had my face in the lounge pillow trying to muffle my laughter. It took a good few months for Aunt Nell to get over that one.

  The funniest of all though was last year, I think it was in July. We all went to church. That day we walked because, even though it was cool, the sun was out and it was a real nice day. We rocked up to the front gate saying hi to everyone. Father John was outside welcoming people and inviting everyone into the church. I was just about to walk up the sandstone steps when I saw Yar running up to us with a big smile on his face. Yar looked immaculate, hair shining and combed to perfection. He had his Bible in his hand and was wearing as usual his Sunday best, a lovely pin- striped suit that fitted him flawlessly. Over the top of his lovely suit trousers was a pair of large bright pink bloomers with a big love heart made out of purple tulle sown to the crutch. Pop, Tui and I giggled, it was bloody funny. Yar just continued on like nothing was out of the ordinary and Father John held onto the church door looking a little pale.