Remembered By Heart: An Anthology of Indigenous Writing (13 page)

At Kurrawang I had to go through the ‘freak show' again. One of the missionaries told me that I would never have children because of the scarring. She wasn't satisfied with telling me once. She said everything was God's plan. I don't think it was God's plan. That was just her idea of God. It's not mine. What sort of God would want that for a child? What sort of God would want a child to be burned and scarred? God had nothing to do with it.

Today, if we speak out about the treatment and conditions in the homes we were in, we are told that we should be grateful for being saved from the life of heathens. Sometimes I think that the government and the missionaries were trying to play God to a people they didn't understand. We were a people who lived with nature and loved and cared for the land. Our idea of God was very different.

The main aim of the missionaries was to convert us to
their religion and to teach reading and writing for work after the mission. Some people benefited from the missionaries' education, but lots more were just trained to be domestic servants on low-paid wages, like me. After Kurrawang I was sent even farther away from my family and country in the hope that I would forget them. I lost a grandmother's and parents' love and guidance, family life, extended family, language. Everything.

Even if some people benefited from the education, it didn't prepare any of us for racism outside the mission. Maybe they were thinking more about life after death than this life. They used to say, ‘God will help you through life's temptations. If you read the Bible, pray and go to church you will be a shining example to the unconverted.' And, if you did these things, you'd be rewarded when you died.

That's what they said. But when I walked down the street in Esperance, people went right out of their way to walk around me instead of keeping to their straight path.

Abridged from
Rene Baker File #28 / E.D.P
Rene Powell and Bernadette Kennedy, 2005.

On 14 February 1966, Australia's currency changed from pounds, shilling and pence to dollars and cents. According to Mum and Nan, it was a step backwards. ‘There's no money like the old money,' Nan maintained, and Mum agreed. They were shocked when they heard that our new money would not have as much silver in it as the old two-shilling, one-shilling, sixpence and threepence.

‘It'll go bad, Glad,' said Nan one night, ‘you wait and see. You can't make money like that, it'll turn green.'

Then I noticed that Nan had a jar on the shelf in the kitchen with a handful of two-shilling pieces in it. Towards the end of the week, the jar was overflowing with silver coins. I could contain my curiosity no longer.

‘What are you saving up for, Nan?'

‘Nothin'! Don't you touch any of that money!'

I cornered Mum in the bath. ‘Okay Mum, why is Nan
hoarding all that money? You're supposed to hand it over to the bank and get new money.'

‘Don't you say anything to anyone about that money, Sally. It's going to be valuable one day; we're saving it for you kids. When it's worth a lot we'll sell it and you kids can have what we make. You might need it by then.'

I went back in the kitchen. ‘Mum told me what you're up to,' I told Nan. ‘I think it's crazy.'

‘Hmph! We don't care what you think, you'll be glad of it in a few years' time. Now you listen, if anyone from the government comes round asking for money, you tell them we gave all ours to the bank. If they pester you about the old money, you just tell 'em we haven't got money like that in this house.'

‘Nan,' I half-laughed, ‘no one from the government is gunna come round and do that!'

‘Ooh, don't you believe it. You don't know what the government's like. You're too young. You'll find out one day what they can do to people. You never trust anybody who works for the government. You mark my words, Sally.'

I was often puzzled by the way Mum and Nan approached anyone in authority, as if they were frightened. I knew that couldn't be the reason, why on earth would anyone be frightened of the government?

Apart from art and English, I failed nearly everything else in the second term of my third year in high school. And
Mum was disgusted with my seven per cent for geometry and trigonometry.

‘You've got your Junior soon. How on earth do you expect to pass that?'

‘I don't care whether I pass or not. Why don't you let me leave school?'

‘You'll leave school over my dead body!'

‘What's the point in all this education if I'm going to spend the rest of my life drawing and painting?'

‘You are not going to spend the rest of your life doing that, there's no future in it. Artists only make money after they're dead and gone.'

I gave up arguing and retreated to my room. Mum never took my ambition to be an artist seriously. Not that she didn't encourage me to draw. Once when I was bored, she had let me paint pictures all over the asbestos sheets that covered in our back verandah. Nan had thought it was real good.

I sighed. Nan believed in my drawings.

The following weekend, my Aunty Judy came to lunch. She was a friend of Mum's. Her family, the Drake-Brockmans, and ours had known each other for years. ‘Sally, I want to have a talk with you about your future,' she said quietly, after we'd finished dessert.

I glared at Mum.

‘You know you can't be an artist. They don't get anywhere in this world. You shouldn't worry your mother like that. She wants you to stay at school and finish your
Leaving. You can give up all idea of art school because it's just not on.'

I was absolutely furious. Not because of anything Aunty Judy had said, but because Mum had the nerve to get someone from outside the family to speak to me. Mum walked around looking guilty for the rest of the afternoon.

It wasn't only Mum and Aunty Judy, it was my art teacher at school as well. He held up one of my drawings in front of the class one day and pointed out everything wrong with it. There was no perspective; I was the only one with no horizon line. My people were flat and floating. You had to turn it on the side to see what half the picture was about. On and on he went. By the end of ten minutes the whole class was laughing and I felt very small. I always believed that drawing was my only talent; now I knew I was no good at that, either.

The thought of that horrible day made me want to cry. I was glad I was in my room and on my own, because I suddenly felt tears rushing to my eyes and spilling down my cheeks. I decided then to give up drawing. I was sick of banging my head against a brick wall. I got together my collection of drawings and paintings, sneaked down to the back of the yard, and burnt them.

When Mum and Nan found out what I'd done, they were horrified.

‘All those beautiful pictures,' Nan moaned, ‘gone for ever.' Mum just glared at me. I knew she felt she couldn't
say too much. After all, she was partly responsible for driving me to it.

It took about a month for Mum and I to make up. She insisted that if I did my Junior, she wouldn't necessarily make me go on to my Leaving. Like a fool, I believed her.

Towards the end of the school year, I arrived home early one day to find Nan sitting at the kitchen table, crying. I froze in the doorway. I'd never seen her cry before.

‘Nan … what's wrong?'

‘Nothin'!'

‘Then what are you crying for?'

She lifted up her arm and thumped her clenched fist hard on the kitchen table. ‘You bloody kids don't want me, you want a bloody white grandmother, I'm black. Do you hear, black, black, black!' With that, Nan pushed back her chair and hurried out to her room. I continued to stand in the doorway, I could feel the strap of my heavy schoolbag cutting into my shoulder, but I was too stunned to remove it.

For the first time in my fifteen years, I was conscious of Nan's colouring. It was true, she wasn't white. Well, I thought logically, if she wasn't white, then neither were we. What did that make us, what did that make me? I had never thought of myself as being black before.

That night, as my sister Jill and I were lying quietly on our beds, looking at a poster of John, Paul, George and Ringo, I said, ‘Jill … did you know Nan was black?'

‘Course I did.'

‘I didn't, I just found out.'

‘I know you didn't. You're really dumb, sometimes. God, you reckon I'm gullible, but some things you just don't see. You know we're not Indian, don't you?'

‘Mum said we're Indian.'

‘Does Nan look Indian?'

‘I've never really thought about how she looks. Maybe she comes from some Indian tribe we don't know about.'

‘Ha! That'll be the day! You know what we are, don't you?'

‘No, what?'

‘Boongs, we're Boongs!' I could tell Jill was unhappy with the idea.

It took a few minutes before I summoned up enough courage to say, ‘What's a Boong?'

‘You know, Aboriginal. God, of all things, we're Aboriginal!'

‘Oh.' I suddenly understood. There was a great deal of social stigma attached to being Aboriginal at our school.

‘I can't believe you've never heard the word Boong,' Jill muttered in disgust. ‘Haven't you ever listened to the kids at school? If they want to run you down, they say, “Aah, ya just a Boong.” Honestly, Sally, you live the whole of your life in a daze!'

Jill was right; I did live in a world of my own. She was much more attuned to our social environment. It was important for her to be accepted at school, because she enjoyed being there.

‘You know, Jill,' I said after a while, ‘if we are Boongs, and
I don't know if we are or not, but if we are, there's nothing we can do about it, so we might as well just accept it.'

‘Accept it? Can you tell me one good thing about being an Abo?'

‘Well, I don't know much about them,' I answered. ‘They like animals, don't they? We like animals.'

‘A lot of people like animals, Sally. Haven't you heard of the RSPCA?'

‘Of course I have! But don't Abos feel close to the earth and all that stuff?'

‘God, I don't know. All I know is none of my friends like them. I've been trying to convince Lee for two years that we're Indian.' Lee was Jill's best friend and her opinions were very important. Lee loved Nan, so I didn't see that it mattered.

‘You know Susan?' Jill said, interrupting my thoughts. ‘Her mother said she doesn't want her mixing with you because you're a bad influence. She reckons all Abos are a bad influence.'

‘Aaah, I don't care about Susan, never liked her much anyway.'

‘You still don't understand, do you,' Jill groaned in disbelief. ‘It's a terrible thing to be Aboriginal. Nobody wants to know you, not just Susan. You can be Indian, Dutch, Italian, anything, but not Aboriginal! I suppose it's all right for someone like you, you don't care what people think. You don't need anyone, but I do!' Jill pulled her rugs over her head and pretended she'd gone to sleep. I think she
was crying, but I had too much new information to think about to try and comfort her. Besides, what could I say?

Nan's outburst over her colouring and Jill's assertion that we were Aboriginal heralded a new phase in my relationship with my mother. I began to pester her incessantly about our background. Mum consistently denied Jill's assertion. She even told me that Nan had come out on a boat from India in the early days. In fact, she was so convincing I began to wonder if Jill was right after all.

When I wasn't pestering Mum, I was busy pestering Nan. To my surprise, I discovered that Nan had a real short fuse when it came to talking about the past. Whenever I attempted to question her, she either lost her temper and began to accuse me of all sorts of things, or she locked herself in her room and wouldn't emerge until it was time for Mum to come home from work. It was a conspiracy.

One night, Mum came into my room and sat on the end of my bed. She had her This Is Serious look on her face. With an unusual amount of firmness in her voice, she said quietly, ‘Sally, I want to talk to you.'

I lowered my
Archie
comic. ‘What is it?'

‘I think you know. Don't act dumb with me. You're not to bother Nan any more. She's not as young as she used to be and your questions are making her sick. She never knows when you're going to try and trick her. There's no point in digging up the past; some things are better left buried. Do you understand what I'm saying? You're to leave her alone.'

‘Okay, Mum,' I replied glibly, ‘but on one condition.'

‘What's that?'

‘You answer one question for me.'

‘What is it?' Poor Mum, she was a trusting soul.

‘Are we Aboriginal?'

Mum snorted in anger and stormed out. Jill chuckled from her bed. ‘I don't know why you keep it up. I think it's better not to know for sure, that way you don't have to face up to it.'

‘I keep pestering them because I want to know the truth, and I want to hear it from Mum's own lips.'

‘It's a lost cause, they'll never tell you.'

‘I'll crack 'em one day.'

Jill shrugged good-naturedly and went back to reading her
True Romance
magazine.

I settled back into my mattress and began to think about the past. Were we Aboriginal? I sighed and closed my eyes. A mental picture flashed vividly before me. I was a little girl again, and Nan and I were squatting in the sand near the back steps.

‘This is a track, Sally. See how they go.' I watched, entranced, as she made the pattern of a kangaroo. ‘Now, this is a goanna and here are emu tracks. You see, they all different. You got to know all of them if you want to catch tucker.'

‘That's real good, Nan.'

‘You want me to draw you a picture, Sal?' she said as she picked up a stick.