Jessica (39 page)

Jessica feels in her heart that Jack
has
written to her and that Hester's kept his letter, or letters, back from her. It's just another reason why she doesn't want her family any longer. She'll wait for Jack and even if she can't have him, there'll never be anyone else, Tea Leaf will always love him.

‘Jessica, how am I gunna convince you that your mother will let you come back here after Christmas dinner?' Joe now asks.

Jessica sees her father's problem immediately — nothing Hester can say or do will make her trust her mother. Jessica has a sudden idea, and grins. ‘We could have it here,' she says. ‘A picnic on Christmas Day, Christmas dinner beside the stream,' she points towards the place, ‘under that big river gum. I'll clear a space.'

Joe looks doubtful. ‘She'll want the turkey hot, like always, she won't want to serve dinner on a cold plate.' Jessica laughs harshly. ‘It's always what she wants, ain't it, never what anyone else wants? If she wants to help with the birth, she's gunna have to come here anyway. May as well kill two birds with one stone.'

Joe rises wearily to his feet. ‘I'll tell her you're not comin' home, not comin' for Christmas dinner neither, but you'll have a picnic here, that's all.' He looks at Jessica. ‘Best I can do, girlie. I can't tell your mother nothing no more,' Joe confesses.

On the morning of Christmas Eve, Jessica decides she'll spend the day clearing around the big red river gum in preparation for the next day. Joe has brought back the news that Hester has agreed to come over and bring Christmas dinner — cold turkey and her special pudding. Jessica feels both triumphant and frightened. She hasn't seen her mother and sister for five months and she doesn't know how she'll react when they arrive.

Meg's baby, she thinks, will be nearly as big as her own by now. Jack's child in her sister's stomach — she doesn't know if she'll be able to contain her tears, or even her anger. The child Jack didn't want to have, in case he was killed, is sitting snug as a bug in a rug inside Meg's tummy. In the stomach of Mrs Jack Thomas. Jessica thinks bitterly to herself that her beloved Jack has ended up with the child he doesn't want, inside the wife he doesn't want, and all because of her mother and sister wanting to get their greedy hands on his fortune.

Jessica decides she must make a large clearing in case of snakes. They'll need to be able to spread the rug Hester brings so that there's lots of cleared ground around it. Snakes don't see or hear too well and with so many about, one could quite easily drop in on them. She'll keep the shotgun and the axe nearby and Joe carries the Winchester in the sulky at all times.

Jessica plans to start early, before sun-up so as to beat the worst of the heat. But as she comes out of her hut not long after first light, she finds Mary waiting for her. ‘Good morning, Mary, you've come early,' Jessica greets her.

‘Sorry, Jessie, but I can't come this afternoon. They's having a Christmas party for the blackfellas' kids up the Lutheran Mission and me two young 'uns wants to go and some of the others from the mob also. I'm the Mission girlie, see, so I gotta take ‘em.'

‘Can you stay for a cuppa?' Jessica asks.

‘No, ta Jessie, I got to go.' Mary tilts her head to one side and examines Jessica. ‘It's getting pretty close, that baby,' she laughs, and puts her small black hand on Jessica's stomach. Then she bends and puts her ear to the side of her tummy, still keeping her hand on it. ‘Strewth, could be your Christmas present from Santy Claus.' She laughs again, then she straightens up and wishes Jessica a merry Christmas, putting her hand into the pocket of her pinny and taking out a brown paper packet. ‘For your baby, Jessie.' She smiles shyly, then says, ‘The mob got a bit o' money together. They not forget you, Jessie. Us aunties, we gone into Narrandera and bought it in the Chink shop,' Mary explains proudly.

Jessica opens the packet and pulls out a tiny baby's dress in oyster-coloured Chinese silk with cherry blossoms embroidered on the front. ‘It's for a girl,' Mary announces. ‘Boys go bad, you're gunna have a girl, Jessie.' ‘Oh Mary, it's lovely,' Jessica exclaims, holding the tiny dress up. She kisses Mary. ‘Thank you, thank you,' she cries and bursts into tears. ‘Mary, you are so kind to me,' Jessica sobs. Mary embraces her and takes her into her arms, though she can hardly manage to do so for the size of Jessica's baby sticking out in front. ‘That baby coming soon — crying, that's always the sign,' the little Aboriginal woman declares, then adds, ‘You do them squatting, you hear, Jessie? Much as you can. I come back tonight after Santy Cia us seen the kids at the Mission.'

After Mary has departed Jessica starts on the clearing. The sun won't be long in coming but she thinks the shade of the river gum will protect her from the worst of it for a while. She finds that she's panting after the least effort. But almost two hours later, with the sun well up, the heat haze shimmering in the north paddock so that the old man saltbush is a green glassy smudge, she has all but completed the task. There remains just one large boulder, large only because of her present state and Jessica knows better than to try to lift it. Joe can do it when he comes tomorrow, she thinks. Then she changes her mind — she wouldn't have left it for him before, so why now? She won't leave a job half done. She decides to cut a stout sapling and use it as a crowbar to move the rock so she doesn't have to use much of her own strength.

Jessica cuts an ironbark pole about four inches in diameter and six feet long and sharpens one end to a wedge shape so it will slip easily under the rock. Her efforts prove successful enough and she tumbles the rock towards the edge of the clearing, using the leverage of the pole. She needs only to move it another couple of feet when it lands after a roll in a small hollow. It's jammed and she has difficulty slipping the wedged tip of the pole in under it. After a bit of a struggle she gets the wedge halfway in — enough, she hopes, to allow her to move the rock out of the indentation and onwards. Jessica pushes her end of the pole downwards, but it isn't secured well enough under the rock and springs loose. She stumbles and pitches forward onto the hard ground, breaking her fall with her hands and rolling on her side.

Jessica lies perfectly still, panting, not wanting to move, her heart beating furiously, waiting to see where she hurts. But after a few moments she realises she hasn't hurt herself or her baby and slowly struggles to bring herself up onto her hands and knees. The pole lies within reach and she grabs it up and pushes it into the ground in front of her and, with both hands grasping the stake, pulls herself up. Jessica is almost standing when she feels a terrible cramping pain in her back.

Jessica is panting hard and she puts her hand on her stomach. Maybe it was simply a pain from doing too much, she tells herself. But now another comes. Mary has told her to expect labour pains — ‘They come slow and you think it's nothing much, just the baby kicking or something like that. But you got to listen, wait for them. After a few hours they keeps comin' faster, time's getting near, you got to get ready ‘cause that baby wanting to break out of jail.'

Jessica comforts herself that the pains will keep coming for some hours, that Mary will be back to look after her by the time they come closer together. She decides to go into the hut and rest and try to get everything ready. She's got an enamel basin and there's a fire laid with the kettle filled, so all Mary's got to do is boil the water. She's got an old sheet and three old towels: one for the birth mat, one for cleaning the baby and one for swaddling it. There's a sharp knife for cutting the umbilical cord and a bit of cat gut to tie it. There's also plenty of swabs made by the two of them from one of her dresses, boiled clean and dried in the sun on a hot stone and then stacked up tidy on the tiny table. The hurricane lamp is filled with kerosene with its wick trimmed in case they have to work at night. Jessica can't teach Mary how to stitch her if she needs it, so she hasn't asked Joe for his horsehair and needle, though he's brought a jar of Condy's crystals, petroleum jelly and a tin of boracic powder.

Jessica barely makes it to the hut before another contraction comes, but it's not too bad, she thinks to herself again — it must have taken about five minutes to get to the door from the clearing. But she just makes it to the bed before she has another. She manages to kick off her boots and even to remove her bloomers. The labour pains are now no more than two minutes apart, though she has no way of timing them as she doesn't have a clock. She is already wet with perspiration and her dress is soaked and clinging to her body. The hut is a veritable furnace, with the noon sun beating down on the tin roof.

‘Oh, Gawd, let me last until Mary comes,' Jessica prays. She manages to get herself onto Joe's rough wooden bed and she feels woozy, but thinks it must be from the heat. She's put a mug of water on the table and now she reaches for it and brings it to her mouth, spilling half of it down her dress.

The pains are coming more frequently now, every minute or so, and Jessica knows her baby is very near. She feels she will faint from the suffocating heat and some deep instinct tells her she must get out of the hut, go to the creek under the trees and get her legs into the water. The creek still runs quite quickly and there is a shallow pool under the river gum where Mary has set a fish trap. Jessica knows it comes up no further than her knees. She remembers that Mary has told her how the women of some Aboriginal tribes give birth in a creek, which keeps the child safe ‘cause it doesn't come out the womb breathing proper. She can hear Mary's voice in her head, ‘They pull it out the water and give it a whack on the bum to make it cry, fill its lungs with air. Some of the aunties say it's the best way, but the Wiradjuri, we don't do it.'

Jessica struggles from the bed, the pain now gripping her like a vice so that she howls out, but she makes it to the door where she's left the pole. Using it to support her, she moves towards the creek, screaming and howling. She can feel the baby coming, pushing down, the contractions increasing and becoming so powerful that she knows she's got to squat soon. She reaches the side of the creek and starts to squat, pulling her skirt up above her waist. The part of the embankment where she squats gives way suddenly and the sand bank crumbles into the water. Jessica cannot maintain her balance and she tumbles headlong into the stream.

Jessica thinks her whole body will split apart from the pain she feels, but she struggles to regain her feet, splashing furiously in the water, gasping and thrashing about. She feels the sandy bottom under the soles of her feet and this gives her a little security, though she is still too panic-stricken to know that the water has cooled her and given her a buoyancy she desperately needs. She reaches for the creek bank and knows at once that she hasn't the strength to pull herself up.

Jessica feels as though something has exploded within her as her waters break and flow away into the stream. She's utterly helpless and all she can do is squat down in the water, bear down and let the pain come. She feels her vagina stretching, the contractions coming faster, and her body seems to be tearing open as her baby's head starts to come through and they increase in power again. Her heart beats even faster and she screams suddenly so that a flock of galahs in the paddock across the creek rise in fright, their high-pitched splintered screeching
chirrachirra
filling the air. There is nothing Jessica can do to stop the baby coming now. ‘Push down, push, yiz gotta push hard,' Mary's voice says in her head. ‘I can't!' she cries aloud, as though Mary is present. ‘Oh Mary, help meeee!' she screams as the terrible pain overcomes her.

The water around Jessica is bloody, but it clears quickly with the flow of the stream and then is almost immediately bloody again. She looks down and sees that her baby is halfway out of her body. Instinctively she reaches down and takes it by the shoulders and pulls. Just at the very moment she's quite sure she must die from the pain, suddenly she is holding her little baby. It is out and she lifts it out of the water with the umbilical cord still attached. The water has washed some of the blood from the tiny body. Jessica holds it in one hand and spanks its bottom. The baby gives a tiny sneeze then screws up its eyes and yowls, taking in its first lungful of glorious air.

Sitting back in the stream, Jessica rests her baby on her stomach with its head against her heart, and laughs and weeps and laughs again, and sniffs and sobs and laughs in what becomes an ecstatic giggle. One hand trails in the cool water that reaches up to her thighs. She takes her hand from the stream and moves the baby slightly to one side. She has given birth to a boy. The boy Joe always wanted — a boy she will call Joey, after him. After a while Jessica gathers enough strength to cup her hands into the water and wash her baby, splashing its head and tiny body until it is clean all over, the almost brick-red colour of the newly born.

Jessica stays in the stream, too weak to move. She's lucky that she is shaded by the leaves of the big river gum overhead. She knows she's got to cut the umbilical cord quickly and get rid of the placenta, as Mary told her it can create infection. She has no knife and worries that she might have to bite it through. But then she searches the bottom of the creek around where she is sitting and, after pulling out several small stones, finds one with a sharp edge. She's already asked Mary if cutting the cord would hurt her baby or herself. ‘That cord it dead when the baby come out, it don't work no more, it don't hurt to cut,' Mary replied. ‘What about the blood?' Jessica remembers asking. ‘No blood, Jessie, blood don't come no more in that string.'