Nearly fifteen
Every year, we go and visit family that live on the Erambie Mission. Mummy has to get permission from the Mission Manager to enter the Mission. He always lets her, though. It’s wonderful visiting. Mummy and Aunty Gwenie sit and have their cups of tea and I sit and listen to them talk or I go and play with the other kids. We got a big family and they live everywhere; not just in Condo and Koora but all over—I’m real proud.
But Mummy’s worried about dying and I don’t know why. When we’re driving home, she tells me, ‘If anything happens to me, you’ve gotta push me outta the way and stop the car as best you can and get out’. I’m not to worry about her but I gotta make sure I’m safe. I don’t know why she’s telling me this but I say, ‘Yes, Mummy’. Now, I watch her like a hawk when she’s behind the wheel, making sure she’s all right, worrying if anything’s gonna happen to her.
I’m too scared to ask the others why she’d be worried. It’s like the fear with the Welfare: if I ask, it might come true. I know she had cancer years ago. That’s why she was in hospital those times, why the other kids had to go to the Homes till she got better and why she was sick when we was living in the tents. Biting my lip, I worry.
There’s a talent quest on at the Koora hall, put on for us young ones around town. Me, Lynnie and Kevin go. We have fun. Me and Loretta and Heather sing ‘Daddy Cool’ and come second. Some boys have taken Lynnie’s shoes and we’re trying to get them back; we’d get in trouble if she came home without them. Mummy has heard the ruckus from the hall; she thinks they were my shoes because she heard me singing out about them. I try to tell her they weren’t, but Lynnie and Kevin say I’m lying. Mummy believes them and I get a hiding with the jug cord; my first-ever hiding, for doing nothing wrong.
I hate them for getting me in trouble for nothing. I can’t believe that Mummy didn’t believe me. Meryl comes over and asks me why I’m mucking up so bad. I don’t try to explain ’cause I know she wouldn’t believe me, either.
One day, after picking tomatoes out at Goolagong, I go down to the old, rundown wooden toilet away from the house. I sit and pretend to be going to the toilet while, all the time, I’m having a smoke. Because there’s holes and cracks in the old wood, I wave my hands around trying to blow the smoke away so that, if Mummy’s outside, she can’t see none coming from inside the toilet.
I finish my smoke and walk back to the house. As I walk in, Mummy says, ‘Come here to me, Miss’. I know instantly I’m in trouble.
‘What have you got there?’
‘Nothing, where?’
‘In your pocket.’
‘Nothing’s in my pocket.’ I look down and find my cigarette packet sticking halfway out of my jean pocket. I feel myself dying inside; now I know I am in deep trouble. I hold my breath, not knowing what to say, what to do.
‘Give them to me,’ Mummy says. I pull them out and pass them to her. I know I’m gonna cop it. I try to reach out as far as I can so she can take them but it doesn’t matter—she clips me under the ear. I hurt, not so much from the physical slap, but because Mummy had caught me doing something wrong. My ear is still ringing when I go into my bedroom crying, shattered. I have been Mummy’s little Miss Goody-Two-Shoes all my life and now things have changed. I lie on my belly, shell-shocked that Mummy found those cigarettes.
After a while, I get up. My mood has changed. I’m pissed off now ’cause I lost my smokes. How am I gonna get another packet? I spent all my tomato money on them; I won’t get no more till next weekend when we go to the paddocks again.
I look down at my hands. They’re a mess; look at my nails—too many tell-tale signs of being a fruit picker. I feel myself getting wild with Mummy. If she wasn’t in the kitchen when I walked through, I could’ve got the smokes to my bedroom and hid them. I start doing my nails. I feel better. I start singing one of them country and western songs. I do one hand and the next. I hear Mummy sing out to me.
I go out of the room happy. I’m over it now, having the shits with Mummy. I’m gonna make her a cup of tea. I grab the teapot and put the tea leaves in, waiting for the jug to boil.
Lynnie comes in.
‘What’re you doing?’
‘Making Mummy a cup of tea.’
‘Yeah, that’s right! Mummy’s baby, hey.’
‘Fuck off, okay.’
I stand in front of the jug, willing it to hurry up and boil faster before anyone else comes in to give me shit. I was making the tea ’cause I love her, not to get in her good books. It takes more than that, anyway. My mind’s thinking now: will Mummy think I’m making her a cup of tea just to suck up? I add the sugar and the old Sunshine milk. God, I hate that stuff in tea. I take it out to her.
‘Mummy, I made you a cup of tea.’
‘Thanks, daught.’ All is right with the world.
Faintly, I hear Kevin sing out to me, ‘Kerry, Heather’s here’. I run out the door. She’s got her denim gear on, too—I love it when we hang around together and dress the same. I get her and me a can of Coke each out of the fridge and we go outside to sit under our favourite tree. Heather tells me they went to town and did shopping, and she ran into the Buckleys—some of the other kids we hang around with—while she was there.