My Place (17 page)

‘Sure, anything.'

‘I'd like you to stop mixing with Mary.' He smiled his charming smile again.

‘Why?' I was genuinely puzzled.

‘I think you know why.'

‘No, I don't.'

‘You're a bad influence, you must realise that.' Believe it or not, that was one part of my character I was unaware of.

‘What do you mean?' I wanted him to spell it out.

‘This is Mary's Leaving year, the same as yours. I don't want her mixing with you in case she picks up any of your bad habits.'

Aaah, I thought. He's heard about my truancy.

‘What about after Leaving?' I asked meekly. I sensed there was more to this than just that.

‘No. I don't think so. Really, it'd be better if you broke off your friendship entirely. You do understand, don't you?' he said in an incredibly charming way.

‘Oh, I understand,' I replied. I was amazed that he could have such a charming manner and yet be such a dag.

‘Good girl, I knew you would.' He was relieved. ‘Oh, by the way. I can count on you not to say anything to Mary, can't I? You'll find a way of breaking things off between you, won't you?'

I nodded my head, and he walked off.

I was hurt and disappointed. He was a deacon, I'd looked up to him. I was lucky I had my pride, it came to my rescue yet again. I didn't need people like him, I decided.

It was about that time that I began to analyse my own attitudes and feelings more closely. I looked at Mum and Nan and I realised that part of my inability to deal constructively with people in authority had come from them. They were completely baffled by the workings of government or its bureaucracies. Whenever there were difficulties, rather than tackle the system directly, they'd taught us it was much more effective to circumvent or forestall it. And if that didn't work, you could always ignore it.

That summer, the State Housing decided to paint the exterior of all the houses in our street. A decision that really panicked Nan. She made sure the front and back doors were kept locked so
they couldn't come inside, and she spent most of the day peeping out at them from behind the curtains.

I tried to reason with her, but to no avail. The fact that State Housing employees had only ever called to collect the rent or carry out routine maintenance meant nothing to Nan. For her, they were here to check on us, and the possibility of eviction was always there, hanging over our heads like some invisible guillotine.

I thought back to all the years she had spent buttering up the rent men. Each rent day, Nan would go through the same routine. She rose early and spent all morning cleaning the house, not that she ever intended letting the rent man in. It was just a way of relieving all her nervous tension. Then she washed and dried our best cup and saucer and arranged a plate of biscuits in tempting display. After that, she hunted for a milk jug that didn't have a crack in it. Her final touch was to plump up the cushion we had sitting on the chair on the front porch. She wanted him to be comfortable.

And the whole time Nan was preparing morning tea, she'd grumble under her breath, ‘That bloody rent man! Who does he think he is, taking up my time like this. Doesn't he know I've got work to do?' Of course, once he arrived, it was a different story.

‘You're here at last,' she'd smile, ‘sit down, you must be tired. They shouldn't make you walk so far.'

Why did she do it? I asked myself. Why was she afraid? It was a free country, wasn't it? I decided I'd try and talk to her again. Try to explain how things worked.

After Nan had given the painters a slap-up morning tea, I cornered her out the back, where she was raking up leaves. ‘Nan,' I said suspiciously, ‘I think I've just realised why you've been treating the rent man like royalty all these years. You've been bribing them, haven't you?'

‘I don't know what you're talking about, Sally.'

‘Yes, you do. All these years, you've been frightened that we'd get evicted. That's why you've been buttering up the rent men. You thought if it came to the crunch, he might put in a good word for us.'

‘Good men have collected rent from this house over the years. Sally. Don't you go running down the rent men.'

‘You know I'm not running down the rent men, Nan, I'm just trying to talk about all this.'

‘Talk, talk, talk, that's all you do. You don't do any work.'

‘Nan,' I said, in a reasonable tone of voice, ‘I don't think you understand about the house we rent.'

‘What do you mean?' she muttered as she kept her head down and continued to rake.

‘Well, you only get evicted if you don't look after the place. For example, if we were to smash a wall or break all the windows, they might think about throwing us all out, but otherwise, as long as we pay the rent, they let you stay.'

‘Hmmph, you think you know everything, don't you?' she replied bitterly. ‘You don't know nothin', girl. You don't know what it's like for people like us. We're like those Jews, we got to look out for ourselves.'

‘What do you mean people like us? We're just like anybody else, aren't we? I didn't even know you knew Jews existed, how on earth could we be the same as them?'

‘In this world, there's no justice, people like us'd all be dead and gone now if it was up to this country.' She stopped and wiped her mouth with a men's handkerchief. Her eyes looked tired and wet.

‘Nan,' I said carefully. ‘What people are we?'

She was immediately on the defensive. She looked sharply at me with the look of a rabbit sensing danger. ‘You're tryin' to trick me again. Aaah, you can't be trusted. I'm not stupid, you know. I'm not saying nothing. Nothing, do you hear.'

I suddenly felt terribly sad. The barriers were up again. Just when I thought I was finally getting somewhere. ‘Nan,' I coaxed, ‘I'm not trying to trick you. I just want to know what people we are, that's all.'

‘I'm not talking, I'm not talking,' she muttered as she dropped her rake and put her hands over her ears.

I sighed and walked back to the house. Inside, I felt all churned
up, but I didn't know why. I had accepted by now that Nan was dark, and that our heritage was not that shared by most Australians, but I hadn't accepted that we were Aboriginal. I was too ignorant to make such a decision, and too confused. I found myself coming back to the same old question: if Nan was Aboriginal, why didn't she just say so? The fact that both Mum and Nan made consistent denials made me think I was barking up the wrong tree. I could see no reason why they would pretend to be something they weren't. And Nan's remark about the Jews had confused me even more. I knew a lot about the Jews because of the war and Dad. In my mind, there was no possible comparison between us and them.

Mum was always a hard worker and had plenty of drive, but, in a small way, she was also proving to be quite a successful business woman. She had been doing so well for many years working as a florist that, in 1967, with the help of a loan from her old friend Lois, she was able to buy her own florist's business. Things were now really looking up, financially.

But I am certain Mum would have been more contented if she could have seen greater evidence that some of her own drive and ambition was rubbing off on her children.

‘You want to make something of yourself,' Mum said to me one night when she was going on about wanting me to do well in my Leaving. She had sensed that there was more chance of me failing than passing.

I was fed up with hearing that phrase. Mum and Nan were always harping on about how us kids must make something of ourselves.

‘I've got no ambitions,' I replied hopelessly. ‘I can't see myself doing anything.'

‘You've got plenty of talents, you just haven't discovered them yet.'

‘Talents? God, Mum, there are more important things than what talents you've got. I feel pressured by everything else.'

‘There's no reason for dramatics. You've got a good life, what's there for you to worry about?'

How could I tell her it was me, and her and Nan. The sum total of all the things that I didn't understand about them or myself. The feeling that a very vital part of me was missing and that I'd never belong anywhere. Never resolve anything.

I suppose it wasn't surprising that I returned to my final year in high school with a rather depressed attitude. This naturally led to a great deal of initial truanting, which both helped and hindered the inner search I seemed to have unwittingly begun on.

One lunchtime at school, I was talking about families with one of the girls in my class. When I mentioned mine and said how ordinary they were, she burst out laughing.

‘You really think your family's normal?'

‘Course they're normal. What's so unusual about them?'

‘Everything! You've got the most abnormal family I've ever come across. Don't get me wrong, I like your mother, I really do, but the way you all look at life is weird.'

My classmate continued to chuckle on and off for the rest of the lunch hour. I never asked her to explain further, I was too embarrassed.

Not long after that, I was off school with a genuine illness; a bout of the summer flu. As I lay sprawled, stomach-down, on my bed reading one of Jill's
True Romance
magazines, I gradually became aware of a conversation Nan was having with the rent man on the front porch.

‘Just look at that beautiful sky and those fluffy, white clouds over there,' she said. ‘Isn't it wonderful, what God has made?'

I smiled at the tone of her voice, it was the one she always used when she wanted to impress religious people. Nan was a shrewd judge of character. It took only a few minutes for her to sum up a person and then to direct her conversation and behaviour accordingly.

‘Yes, Nanna, it's wonderful. You know, I've lived most of my life in the country, and, now I'm in the city, I miss the birds and animals.'

‘Yes,' interrupted Nan eagerly when she realised she was onto
an influential topic. ‘And look at that black crow over there and all those maggies, God made them, too.'

Following her lead, the rent man added, ‘Yes, and the grass and trees.'

‘That's right,' Nan continued, ‘and here are you and I, both white, and we couldn't do that!'

My initial reaction to Nan's comment was one of silent, uncontrolled laughter, but within minutes, my feelings of amusement had seesawed down to one of deep sadness.

Why did she want to be white? Did she really equate being white with the power of God, or was it just a slip of the tongue? I realised, with sudden insight, that there must have been times in her life when she'd looked around and the evidence was right before her eyes. If you're white, you can do anything.

One day, I answered a knock at the door and found two well-dressed, middle-aged ladies smiling at me benignly.

‘Is Nan in?' they asked politely.

‘Er, no. She's out the back. Actually, she's busy.'

‘Oh. Well dear, we're from the Jehovah's Witness Church and, each week, we call here and have a little talk and a cup of tea with your Nanna. We think she's a wonderful old lady, so generous and kind. Every week, she gives us a small donation for our church.'

‘She does?'

‘Yes. well, it's like a donation. We give her the
Watchtower
and, for a very small price, we sell her copies of our other leaflets, too. She said she just loves reading them.'

‘She did?'

‘Anyway, dear, we won't keep you.' I think they sensed I wasn't going to open the door any wider. ‘Will you tell Nan we called? Here are some leaflets for her to read. You can have them free this time because she's such a wonderful old lady. Please give them to her with our love.'

‘Yes,' I said, taking the leaflets and closing the door.

I took them out the back to where Nan was busy in the garden.

‘Nan,' I said, as if speaking to a naughty child. ‘You haven't been encouraging those ladies from the Jehovah's Witness Church, have you?'

Nan chuckled wickedly. ‘They think I want to become a Jehovah's Witness, Sally.'

‘I know they do. Why did you tell them you've been reading their magazines?' Nan couldn't read or write, even though she tried to disguise the fact.

‘Oh pooh, I just said that so they'd bring me some more. You got some more of their papers there?'

‘Yeah. I didn't give them a donation, though. They said you could have them for nothing because you're such a wonderful old lady.' My sarcasm wasn't lost on her.

She grinned, then said, ‘Feel them, Sally.'

‘Feel what?'

‘The papers.'

I looked, dumbfounded, at the leaflets in my hand. ‘They feel soft,' I said.

‘That's right!' Nan grinned triumphantly. And then, lowering her voice, she whispered, ‘They'll make the most marvellous toilet paper, Sally. I've got boxes of those magazines in my room. It'll save your mother a lot of money!'

I had realised by now that, when it came to economy, Mum's and Nan's ideas were rather peculiar. I was now used to wearing men's jumpers and shoes with the toes stuffed with newspaper. When I was little, Nan had had to make do with the same clothes year in and year out, and there were times when they had both gone without their own tea just to feed us, so I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised by the intensity with which they hoarded everything under the sun.

Initially, hoarding had been a practical necessity. I understood that, but what amazed me was that as our financial situation improved, so their tendency to hoard gained momentum. Before very long, they were both avid collectoholics.

Mum and Nan had always argued, but when it came to disputes over their different stockpiles, the comments became quite pointed. Nan referred to Mum's as broken-down junk, while Mum considered Nan's as good for nothing. Fortunately, there was something they did both agree on, the value of tools.