The Home Girls (20 page)

If Hetty and Rose and Lilian left St Joseph's would it be different then?

Hetty and Rose and Lilian.

A picture of them shot across my mind with arms flung in the air.

“Ssta, Sssta, Nellie Wright went to the lavatory when the bell was going. Can we go and get her? Sssta, Ssta?”

Come away, said the song. Come, come away.

Who would go away from St Joseph's? Half way through the school day? It was as daring as the Pattersons' chasing the saucepan man. I sneaked the lavatory door open.

The singing floated across the school ground.

Come away. Come, come away.

Yes. I will, I will! Before the porch door opens and Hetty Rose or Lillian come tearing towards the lavatory and me.

I plunged through the long grass to the fence, over it and down to the creek. Only one of the Pattersons' cows saw me, a black nostrilled placid old milker who tossed her head sideways as if to say she wasn't going to get out of my way.

You hate me too, don't you old cow Patterson?

I started crying again and running fast up the creek, almost dry because of the long spell without rain. I was going home the creek way! It was forbidden by Pa and Ma and Grammar because of the jagged rocks you had to leap across, the torrent of water when it rained in the mountain, the cattle straying there to drink, snakes, a man kangaroo at times.

As well there were boots chipped of leather on the rocks and sodden by the mud and slime. It was a sin as deadly as any recited from the catechism to go the creek way to and from school although it cut half a mile off the walk. “You go the creek way and you'll be skinned alive,” Ma said a hundred times.

Walking was not that much easier the road way. The road was a series of ruts and bumps and the few cars belonging to the farms on our side of the town travelled over it at a snail's pace. We sometimes got a lift. You couldn't tell whether the cars were going to stop or not, so you tried to look as if it didn't matter. Once I saw the Clem Murphys coming and knew they wouldn't give me a lift because Mr Murphy and Pa were fighting about a dividing fence that was falling down and Pa didn't want to do his share of the repairs. I was surprised when they slowed down almost to a dead stop, and as I was about to step onto the running board, the car leapt forward and I fell back into the tussocks. Clem and his son Tiny (Pa said Tiny was madder than Bernard) roared with laughter looking back at me while they bumped about in the front seat. I wept anew at the memory, dragging sobs from my chest paining with the effort of running.

I suddenly felt something different about my right arm. It had a feeling of emptiness. I knew. I'd left my school bag behind hanging in the porch with the others. I pictured it there in isolation at dinner time and Hetty or Rose or Lilian snatching it up and pulling out my beetroot sandwiches.

“Look, she's got beetroot sandwiches,” one of them would say. “Beetroot! It always runs into the bread. Ugh! We
never
have beetroot sandwiches.”

I saw them running to the circle of children holding my shameful sandwiches aloft for all to see, offering them around, but no one accepting food from the poor Wrights' kitchen. I wept and sniffed, sobbed and ran, jumping from rock to rock and landing sometimes on the edge of a waterhole, surveying soaked boots with soaked and stinging eyes. I ran as if I was being chased, wondering why I did because I would arrive home hours ahead of the usual time, and Pa and Ma and Grammar would want to know why.

I teetered on the edge of a sheet of rock that fell away into a narrow gully, sloping up the other side. You needed to leap across the gully, landing half way up the slope to scramble to the top. I wiped my eyes on my tunic hem to get ready for the jump.

Then stopped.

Across the slope lay a snake, a long shining soft and slippery snake taking the midday sun.

It reminded me of a thick brown line nicely curved drawn on the blackboard by Sister Francis under words for spelling. The line moved showing an underneath creamy pink like a strawberry flavoured custard I'd seen once on the convent table. A deadly red bellied snake! The shock stopped my crying, and I heard a noise that was my breath drawn upwards from my ribs. The snake heard too. It raised its head and flashed out a forked tongue.

This is my side, said the eyes above the straight little mouth.

Come across here and see what happens.

I saw the creek wind on behind it, remote as another world. Perhaps I was to stand there forever, frozen into a still shape. I began to whimper with a hand across my mouth.

“Shoo,” I said. “Go away! I'll poke you with a stick!” The snake did not move and neither did I because our eyes were rivetted together. I started to sob.

“I've got a gun in my bag back at school to shoot you!” I cried. Holy Mother, I lied. It was a bad time to lie. Our Father who art in heaven. Go away. Go away! It raised its head a little more. Now it looked like a badly drawn question mark. I stood not crying now, just breathing in and out. I moved. My boots caused it. The iron clips put on the soles by Pa to make them last slipped and scraped the rock. Oh my God, don't let me fall! Don't let me slide down the slope with the snake coming down on top of me, the two of us tangled together. I screamed at the thought, and the snake as if the sound came to it from a long way off, put its head down calmly and with a beautiful grace, began to half slither half roll, down the slope towards the bottom.

I screamed again. “It's coming after me!”

But at the bottom it pulled itself along, barely rippling its back, moving smoothly and swiftly towards the bushes on the bank. I heard a gentle whispering rustle; I saw its tail barely flick and it was gone.

The stillness lasted only a second without a little sound breaking it. “It's back!” I yelled.

But it was only a small brown bird landing on the twig of a tea tree and it fluttered off in fright. I stood holding onto the quiet too afraid yet to jump where the snake had been. Then from somewhere up the creek came a bellow. A bull! Patterson's bull! A great sturdy fellow with a neck as wide as a chimney and ferocious horns. I was saved from a snake but a bull would gore me to death! Holy Mother help me. Our Father which art in heaven. You don't say which! The Protestants say which! Say who. If Hetty Black heard me! I began to weep again with a shrill squealing noise I hadn't made so far. It did not drown out the bull's roar. Was it coming closer, or was it my fancy? The sound seemed just around the next bend of the creek and I imagined the bull breaking out of the saplings and charging at me with its head down ready to toss me high in the air then stab me with its horns while I rolled under the shadow of its great chest.

Was I going to die today? Holy Mother, would I be in heaven before nightfall? No, no. Please no! Pa, Grammar, help me! I turned and fled towards the creek bank, the one opposite to the direction the snake took, and closest to the road. I would have to take the road now for the last mile, at the mercy of the Motbeys or the Cullens or the Whitbys who might be getting home in time for the afternoon milking. They would offer me a lift to find out what I was up to. Then when their young came home from school the kitchens would be filled with the buzz of tongues.

Nellie Wright went home from school at eleven o'clock without telling Ssta! It would take a lot of bucket rattling by fathers and big brothers to get them outside to help at the dairy with news like that to chew over with bread and melon jam!

I plunged ahead running on the road only when the bush beside it was impassable. When I heard a noise I imagined was a car or sulky I fled for a gully. It was a miracle my tunic wasn't torn to shreds because I was stabbed with dead stalks of ferns and scratched with blackberries. But I ran and wept, stumbled, sniffed and cried, heaved and sobbed. Sometimes away from the road and unable to see it because the fence was bent over and hidden by tussocks I would stand and scream, “I'm lost! I'm lost!”

But I wasn't. Cawley's old place, long abandoned since they built a new house on the hill, told me I had two more bends to round before I was in sight of home. Tears of relief ran down my face and I sniffed at them trotting along the road now.

Then it came into view. Our place. It was on a little fat hill close to the road and looked like a face with a hat drawn down over its eyes. I stared and cried some more. It seemed to be all roof with no fence or trees to hide its shameful smallness.

“Your house looks like Humpty Dumpty on a wall,” Rose had said once, and all the girls had laughed because it was true.

There was no gate or ramp leading to it, just rough steps cut into the clay bank by Pa, and now worn so much they ran into each other, so that you slipped and clawed your way to the top. Why did we have to live here? Why were we so poor? I think I'll walk past. I'll walk on and on to the top of the mountain and down the other side. I'll walk till I fall down and die. I wept some more.

Then level with the house I looked up and on top of the bank where other people would have a garden were Pa and Ma, Grammar, Bernard and Arnold lined up and staring down at me.

“It is our Nellie!” Arnold said.

“Was there a half holidee?” Grammar asked.

“That damn clock's slow,” Ma said glancing back at the farm as if she expected to see the cows streaming home as they sometimes did around three o'clock.

“Slow be damned!” Pa said. “That clocks runs like a waterfall since I gave it that good oiling.”

“Trouble is you can't see the numbers on the face for the oil,” Arnold said.

“You're right, Arnie,” Ma said with a laugh like a fox's bark.

Arnie not Arnold, but Bernard not Bernie. Of course. Hetty and Rose and Lilian and all the world knew he was different.

I looked up at him. The sun was behind his head which seemed larger than ever, like a great round pumpkin I saw once caught on a fence post and hanging by its slender vine, wobbling away there and refusing to fall.

I felt a fresh rush of tears.

“She's crying,” Grammar said hopping like a small grey bird to the edge of the bank. “Help me help her up, one of youse.”

“Arnie,” Pa said, “You and me'll have to put some logs in here and make some proper steps 'fore too long. I know just the tree for it.”

Ma gave her little bark again. “That tree needn't worry about losing its head. It's safe I reckon for another twenty years!”

“Come on girl,” Grammar said, pulling me up.

“Look at the scratches on her legs,” Arnold said, “Who took to you with a briar stick?”

Leaning against Grammar's skirt I sobbed out, “Hetty Black and them!”

“The varmints!” Ma cried, “Hear that, Pa? You go straight to that nunnery after milking and give them a tongue lashing. Getting around dangling those beads and not looking sideways because of those fool hoods! They see nothing! Hear me, Pa?”

Ma was the only one in the family not really a Catholic.

“Let's git to the bottom of it,” Pa said. “Did you say something to Hetty Black to rile her, girl?”

“I said nothing, Pa. Nothing at all!” I cried, fists burrowed into my eyes as we crossed the verandah and went through the front room into the kitchen.

“Hetty Black!” Ma said with scorn. “Ask her has she seen her birth certificate, and her Ma and Pa's marriage certificate. Ask her which one came first.”

“You'd never find either of them in Nora Black's dresser drawers,” Grammar said, “She hasn't cleaned them out since Hetty was in napkins.”

“Always shitty too,” Ma said.

“Never mind the Blacks,” Pa said, “Sit the girl by the stove there. Has she had any dinner?”

Tears flowed again with the pangs of hunger tearing at my insides. The remains of midday dinner were still on the table.

“Snakes alive!” Grammar said wildly snatching at cups and plates. “We been out there staring at the road wondering what was coming, and the washing up not started!”

“Where's your school bag?” Ma asked staring at my legs, around which it usually hung.

I wept louder.

“I went to the lavatory and then came home,” I sobbed.

“Didn't you get your bag?” Ma said, “Where's your beetroot sandwiches?”

“Hetty Black came after me with this big stick,” I cried.

“Couldn't you've gone back for your bag?” Ma said. “You should've got your bag.”

“Give her something to eat then,” Pa said, “Cut her a slice of bread.”

Ma held onto the loaf before it was swept into the tin by Grammar. She cut off an uneven slice. “It riles me to the core to think of them wasted beetroot sandwiches,” she said.

“Have 'em tomorrow,” Arnold said. At the thought I began to sob.

“Now stop bawling,” Pa said, feeling along the shelf for his tobacco. “You gotta stop sometime.”

Grammar was making a great clatter with the tin dish full of crockery and her red hands rubbing soap into a soaked and steaming dish cloth. Ma put the slice of bread on the edge of the table for me. I chewed on it with only a few tears running into the rancid butter.

Pa made his smoke. He wet the edge of the paper and curled it into a neat and slender roll. He was proud of it.

“Look at that one,” he said to Arnold. “A machine couldn't turn it out better.”

“When are you going to let me have a smoke, Pa? Arnold said. “I could roll a good one, too.”

“You'll be rollin' no smoke in this house,” Ma said. “Git out now and bring an armful of wood for the stove.”

Pa pinched some stray tobacco from the end of his smoke. “I might take the axe before milking and knock a few stumps in around them fence posts in the calf paddock,” he said. “They need straightenin' up.”

“Look out for that brown hen if you're down that way,” Ma said.

“If she's let a fox git her I'll kick her all the way to Brown Mountain and back.”