Of Ashes and Rivers that Run to the Sea (5 page)

My parents were moody people who always seemed ill at ease with the world and were constantly at odds with each other. They weren't terribly sociable either. At functions or public gatherings they usually stayed aloof and observed the happenings with looks of disdain on their faces like there was a bad smell in the air or they were mingling with peasants. If they were among friends or people they knew well, they were a bit more interactive and chatty, with our mother being the more extroverted. At home they also stayed aloof but this time it was from each other. If things were particularly tense he would sit in his favourite chair and shield himself behind his broadsheet newspaper from her poison darts while she would furiously crochet or stomp around the house, lips pursed and eyes flashing at anyone who dared to make eye contact with her.

But in church and the presence of God there was a transformation that was hard to believe unless you saw it for yourself. Any seething tempers dissolved the moment they passed the threshold of the church to carry out their heavenly devotions. Of course the moment they passed back over the threshold to the outside world they would pick up where they'd left off. But their love for God was irrefutable and intense and I have always wondered if this was because there was nothing left in their lives that had meaning anymore. God might have been their last hope in a world that had very little joy to offer them and in the loveless marriage that they chose to stay in for better or for worse. They spoke about going ‘home' a number of times and although they returned to England regularly and our mother made a few attempts later on in her life to stay there for good, it was almost like they were doomed to live a lonely and miserable existence far from the places of their birth.

Her eyes were the colour of the ocean on a stormy day and she had a thick brown thatch of hair that despite her best efforts with hairspray, water, combs and clips would not be tamed. Maybe if she had grown it long it would have been easier to deal with but she insisted on an unruly bob which in the early years she would put into a hairnet when she went to bed. I couldn't work out why she would want to keep her hair neat in bed when it was dark and nobody was going to see it but she obviously had her reasons. She
was quite short and solid and reminded me of the stout little ponies that were sent into the Welsh coalmines to pull the carts. Not just because of her physical dimensions but also because the brisk clip-clopping when she walked sounded like horse hooves. Apart from crocheting she embroidered and tatted, making the most extraordinary lace that ended up on handkerchiefs and tablecloths and other bits and pieces and, much to my embarrassment, as collars on my sister's and my dresses. Her family surname was Sherrif of which the earliest reference on record is to a William Sherrif who married a Lady Fairfax of Bolton Castle, Percy, in the 1500s. As the name suggests, he was a local magistrate or shire administrator. A branch of the Sherrifs headed off to America in the early 1800s and changed their name to Shreve. She revealed that there had been a big family scandal once and she might have Romany gypsy in her blood. From the hushed but wistful tone I think she might have been hoping that was true. Maybe this scandal is why the American Sherrifs emigrated and changed their name and why when I was in my early teens she took up the rustic arts of spinning and weaving. When hunched over her spinning wheel pedalling away in her long tweed skirt and crocheted shawl and seated in front of the crackling fireplace in the family room, one could almost imagine her sitting at a hearth in medieval England. Eventually when the arthritis in her pedalling foot began to cause her some serious pain she had a sewing
machine motor attached to the spinning wheel so all she had to do was push down on the pedal like a car accelerator. When she started wearing her ‘creations' in public and foisting them onto other members of the family I knew that this was not a passing fad.

He was of average build and height and looked like a moose. His eyes were blue and in early photos he had dark wavy hair. When I arrived his hairline had already marched a fair distance back across the top of his scalp and sat on the crown of his head like bent seagrass in a receding wave. His beetling eyebrows made up for the lack of hair on his head. His father was born in Burma so I assume his grandfather must have been part of the British Raj or the British East India Company. A descendant of Lord Lovelace and his older brother Baron Wentworth on his maternal side, his mother was mortified when she learnt who his intended was. I understand that while his mother lived she never let him forget that he had married beneath himself. His christening gown was kept in the trunk in their bedroom and was wrapped in tissue paper. It was made of floor-length cream silk with seed pearls sewn onto the bodice and sleeves, and lace on the bottom and around the neck. Also wrapped up in the tissue paper was an old sepia photograph of him wearing the gown when he was around six months old. His mother was dark-haired and beautiful and dressed in a very stylish 1920s dress with a dropped waistline and cloche hat. She was holding him
on her right arm with the gown cascading to the floor, while his father stood on the right side of his mum in what looked like a pin-striped morning suit and sporting a rakish moustache. Neither parent was smiling, as if it was all a very stiff and formal occasion, while the baby had a wide-eyed expression on his face like the camera flash had startled him and he was about to cry. In the trunk was also a small oil painting of his grandmother to whom his mum bore a very close likeness. Occasionally my sister and I would get to speak to his mother when she rang to thank us for our drawings or letters, and she had a lively and prim voice. I find it interesting that although she was concerned about him marrying beneath himself she had no qualms about a coloured child living in her son's household.

Apart from reading his newspapers he enjoyed photography and would always bring his bag of cameras and lenses when we went on outings. The old laundry was the darkroom because it had running water and was separate from the house so no one would bother him. The photographs that he deigned to show us were usually out of focus or over-exposed but he was pleased with his efforts and it gave him something to do and us a break from the constant sniping between him and our mother. Although we went to some beautiful places he didn't like photographing the scenery or the flora or fauna. He only liked photographing children. People didn't seem to
be so aware of perverts in those days, and his unnatural urge to hang around children didn't seem to bother our mother either.

They had two sons, Keith and Aubrey, who were born in England. When the firstborn was a son they were overjoyed. When the second one turned out to be a son as well he marched out of the hospital in disgust leaving the poor woman to spend the rest of her confinement and alas the rest of her life, it seems, in misery. By the number of times that this was brought up in conversation out of his earshot it's obvious that she must have blamed herself for not producing a girl and by her admission this is where things started to unravel between them. Apparently she was warned by her doctor that to have any more children would be fatal but although her child-bearing had come to an end her hope for a daughter didn't. After moving from England to South Africa to live and then on to Australia they adopted a six-week-old baby girl and named her Julie.

Verbal exchanges between our parents were not common but when they did occur they were blistering tirades that were followed by days of frosty silence and even the warmest summer days couldn't take away the coldness that lived in our house like an unwanted guest. There must have been something special between them once. There must have been magic and hope and light in their hearts, but they were definitely all out of love by the time I got there.

Although Aubrey was living at home when I arrived, he wasn't there for long. It seems that the conflict between Mum and Dad wasn't just a mutual thing, it was generously shared with the rest of the family too, and after some altercation with Mum, Aubrey was ripped out of school and sent off to the Flinders Ranges to live with Uncle George. Keith had already gone through a similar process and was living on another sheep station. I did get to see them on occasional visits, but because of the distance between us, both geographically and emotionally, I didn't really get to know them until I was older.

Julie looked like an angel. Not the sort of angel that hangs around God looking all officious like a public servant or a politician but like an angel that sits on the top of a Christmas tree. She was seven months older than me and spent a lot of time indoors as she tired easily due to sickness as a baby. Small, frail and fair she could do no wrong in our mother's eyes. But despite all the pampering Julie never once in my memory displayed any of the egotistical tendencies that usually come with being the centre of one parent's universe.

Although Julie couldn't get out and run around she did have a friend who kept her company and that was Dinky, her little brown dog with white paws and of indeterminate breed. Dinky was a treasure and would let us dress her up in baby's clothes and carry her around wrapped up in a blanket. At times Dinky would come outside and play
with me. She slept under Julie's bed in her basket until I was fourteen, when I found her missing one day only to be coldly informed by mum that she had been put down. I still feel sad that I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to our little mate Dinky.

I don't think many people knew what they were in for when they took on kids like me who were born into traditional Aboriginal families. We were accustomed to a completely different way of life and the expectation that we could walk out of one life and straight into another without experiencing trauma and grief at the loss of our families, our homes, and everything we had known was a travesty of our rights as human beings. My memories of being forcibly assimilated into a white family are ugly, and documentation unearthed a number of years ago in the Northern Territory Archives further indicates that the ‘better life' the government had planned for me left a lot to be desired.

This was the only time that the suitability of my placement was questioned. Even with five different welfare officers looking after my case over a five-year period, this issue was never brought up again despite the fact that things went from bad to worse.

If those in whose care I had been charged had stopped fussing about my bad behaviour and investigated why I was not a happy child they might have discovered some disturbing facts. Apart from my foster mother's admission that she wasn't particularly affectionate towards her children, my foster father was a rampant paedophile who regularly terrorised me from the time I was placed in their care. He liked nothing better than shoving his hand up between my legs when our mother had her back turned, or poking his finger inside me when no one was around. The result of such attention was that between the ages of six and eight, I was hospitalised three times. The first hospitalisation was two-and-a-half years after my first appointment with the
Psychiatric Clinic at the Adelaide Children's Hospital. I was to have regular appointments at the clinic up to and beyond my hospital admittances, so how nobody picked up on the fact that something was severely amiss is beyond me.

A 2009 study by the Boston University School of Medicine among 68,505 participants revealed that children who were subjected to sexual abuse were 49 per cent more likely to experience the early onset of menstruation, and the severity of the abuse increased the likelihood. In later life the abused can also look forward to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, metabolic dysfunction, cancer and depression. So unfortunately the abuse doesn't end with the perpetrator's last act, victims are stuck with it until the end of their days.

The Stilboestral (otherwise known as Diethylstilbestrol) of which I had been given a daily dose for a number of years was phased out in the late seventies when it was found to cause cancer in human beings. After researchers discovered its harmful properties, Stilboestral was confined to veterinary use.

But despite the army of social workers and psychologists and doctors who were supposedly looking after my best interests, nobody asked me what was going on. Nobody asked me about the supposed ‘grass seed', which could have only gotten there by human intervention if it had existed at all. Nobody asked me about the blood on my underpants which was a result of his endlessly probing fingers. They just questioned my foster mother while I sat in silence beside her burning with shame.

But aren't human beings amazing creatures and even at an early age we can choose to let the bad things in life
devour us and we sink or we can make the most of the good bits and swim. A report by the welfare officer in Adelaide on the eleventh of November 1968, five months after my last hospitalisation, shows that I chose to swim:

Somewhere around that time Welfare decided that my placement was a success and I didn't need any more monitoring so obviously my ability to present a good face despite the circumstances was working. Whether I'd learnt this skill during the brief three years with my real family or whether compartmentalising my life into good and bad was an instinct, I'll never know, but I do know that it helped me through some very tough times.

As I got older I managed to escape any more hospitalisations by fighting off my foster father when he tried to poke his fingers where they weren't wanted. He still persisted in shoving his hand between my legs or grabbing my breasts when I had to walk past him though, and this continued until I left home when I was eighteen.

Although I knew I'd be able to get away from his endless shit one day, it still wasn't easy. Sitting in the same room
as him was an effort, I have never felt so much hatred for a human being in all my life. If anyone had given me a gun and told me I was free to use it I would have stuck it in his face and pulled the trigger with no hesitation. I hatched a few murderous plans, like planting a knife in his chest, or smashing his head in with a hammer when he was sleeping, but I had the good sense to stop myself from carrying them out. I knew I would never be believed: he was a God-fearing man who went to church every Sunday and I was just some black kid he and his wife had ‘saved', so I acted like I didn't care, which irritated him even more. Unfortunately I wasn't his only victim – he molested other close family members and the children of family friends as well, including the younger sister of a schoolmate of Julie. Nothing could take away the suffering his actions caused so many people, but having a letter I'd written telling him to rot in hell read out to him on his death bed did give me the greatest pleasure. I think he had a lot of pain in his heart because I never saw him happy. I found out many years later that our mother had known what her husband was getting up to, but her marriage vows to love, honour and obey, for better and for worse, were more important to her than protecting a child in her care.

Communication was another area where I had difficulties. English was not my first language and my foster mother told me a number of times that during the first six months they'd considered ‘sending me back' because
they attributed my ‘refusal' to speak as a sure sign of mental retardation and they didn't want to be lumbered with a disabled kid. In fact I probably didn't understand a word they were saying or how to respond, so wisely decided to keep my mouth shut. For a long time there were different words floating around in my head and on the occasions when I did speak them I received a sharp slap across the face for troubling to talk in my native language. It took a while to sort out which words were acceptable and which were not but in the end the forbidden words faded away. These words were my last link to my real family and if I'd known the importance of that I would have clung on to them forever. But I didn't know and anything that wasn't important to my survival at the time was let go.

Learning a new language and white culture from scratch didn't come easy. Any bad behaviours such as speaking without being spoken to, moving any faster than walking pace in the house, belching, sitting without my legs together and gobbling my food were soon whipped out of me with our mother's pink fairy wand. This was a thin rattan cane that had once had a kewpie doll attached to it like the ones you bought at fetes. It worked wonders. The wooden spoon or a vigorous spanking were her other weapons of choice and if Julie and I were bickering she would grab us both by the hair and smash our heads together. The headaches were excruciating and thankfully
the head-banging stopped when Julie collapsed after one particularly vigorous episode and started vomiting.

Routine was another thing I wasn't accustomed to, but in no time I was conforming to the position of the hands on the clock like I'd been born to timekeeping. Depending on where the hands pointed, it was bath-time or bedtime, time to eat or time to leave for mass. If I was absorbed in play or dawdling, the pink fairy wand would come whistling through the air and find its mark on my legs or arse. This meant that once I got to school I knew how to tell the time better than anyone else.

The life I had left behind and the life I was learning were different in other respects too. Apart from being checked daily for nits, and rashes that might indicate the presence of leprosy, and suspicious coughs, I had to get onto my bony little knees and repeat prayers after our mother until I knew the ‘Hail Mary', the ‘Our Father' and the ‘Glory Be' by rote. I had no idea what I was saying but I mimicked her perfectly, while she beamed from ear to ear, no doubt pleased with herself for instilling the virtues of Christianity into her little savage. After that, I was allowed to ad lib a few prayers of my own – requests to help the starving kids in Africa, or asking God to look kindly upon my parents. According to my foster mother, I was born a sinner because my real mother was a woman of the night. It was only many years later that I realised she was calling my mother a prostitute and saying I was the result of her
carnal activities, which were completely untrue. But back then I took this as her way of saying that my mother was black like night-time and it was a sin if you weren't white, so I tried scrubbing my colour off in the bath. When that didn't work, I resigned myself to the fact that I would always be a sinner and the prayers I had been fervently offering up weren't going to do me any good anyway, so why bother. I decided then that at least if I were a sinner I could behave badly and be excused for it because mine was a condition of birth, not of free will. And when I hit my teens I realised it was all just a big load of shit anyway.

As a child I could recite parts of the mass in Latin, which made her chest swell with pride. Obviously I didn't know what these words meant, but if it made her smile or I wasn't getting a flogging, I was happy to perform. Not long afterwards, though, masses were delivered in English, and Latin disappeared from church services, so I was spared the effort.