Another time on a school trip to the Blue Mountains these two men said I should go back to where I came from. I said we weren’t going home ’til Tuesday but that was the wrong answer because they laughed. They said I was from Africa, but that’s not true. I’m from Beyen. And how could I get to Africa anyway? I don’t have a passport or anyone to stay with. I know they think brown skin is always ‘somewhere else’ on a map. But I can’t say mine comes from Guyana because when I do people always crinkle their eyes and say ‘Ghana?’ like they just haven’t heard me right. Then I have to say ‘No, that’s in Africa, Guyana is in South America.’ And I’m tired of talking about that map and all the different consonants. Continents. I didn’t think those men would care anyway so I just kept my mouth shut and looked at the ground for a very long time.
At the YMCA hostel that night there was unlimited soft drink top-ups. Normally I would’ve been up for an alphabet burping competition because I can usually get to J. But on that particular night if you’d opened me up, you would’ve seen that big old wolf howling at the moon. Alone and lonely (at the same time). Brown is a loud colour to wear on your face. I get onto a crowded bus and everyone looks up at me like they’ve heard my skin arrive. ‘What are you doing here?’ their blank stares say. ‘Turn that pigment down!’
If you didn’t already know, skin has a lifetime colour guarantee. Once I got a whole box of scouring pads from under the kitchen sink and tried to scrape the brown off my arms. I wanted my skin to grow back white so I could be beautiful like Mum. So when we sailed back to France no one would look at us funny and I could blend in like white people do. But when the gauze pads came off it was just the same brown again, full of scabs. So as much as possible I pretend that I’m like water—no colour at all. ‘Can’t hurt me if he can’t see me.’ That’s what I used to think about Dad. Same went for that William Freeman fella. My grandfather. True enough there are things I want to tell you about him. Things not even Mum knew. But I can’t tell you right now. Secrets like those have to be unwrapped at just the right time.
I look inside the Red River Hotel. Pokie lights are still blinking their happy times bright rainbow. They don’t sleep. Pat catches me looking at him and flicks his eyes back to the road ahead. I roll down the window and listen to the gravel crunching under the tyres. Let the sound massage my ears. When Mum was here I never thought about what this town was made of. But after the fall, the world shattered into a thousand pieces. Then I realised those little particles of dust floating through the air were a part of every word we said, every breath and step we took. When they float away there’ll be nothing left and now this place is all but gone.
2 God-knocking box
I’d only ever passed by Hutchins Road on the school bus. Every other day it’s just where the police hide at the bend hoping to nab someone for speeding. But on the day of the funeral, Hutchins Road was a punch in the guts and a ten-car procession.
Pat puts the clicker on and we turn down the road. Can’t leave town without paying respects. The sun falls over Pat’s eyes and for a moment it looks like they’ve turned from blue to green. It’s only a quarter after eight but the heat is already on. Crickets drone like a one-note symphony. The air feels stretched, and you think about which way you’d run if a fire ripped through. Pat’s been here before, buried his mum and dad two weeks apart. Some people are so connected their hearts beat in synchronicity. When one goes, the other can’t survive.
‘I’ll get onto it. Next pay packet, promise.’
There’s not even a wooden cross like some of the other new graves have. I wanted Mum’s to read Tell me when it’s time to wake up because she always slept through the alarm. I’d get the porridge on and tell her when breakfast was ready. But Pat said you couldn’t write a joke on a headstone.
I can still see the holes in the ground where the fold-up chairs were. They didn’t want any of the oldies keeling over with heatstroke. One funeral at a time, Margie said.
At the funeral it was mostly Pat’s friends who I didn’t know. Men in mismatching suits with chunky black sneakers. Narelle, the Red River barmaid, wore a tight red skirt and strappy heels. She came long after Mum had stopped working at the pub, but maybe it was a solidarity thing. Like she was representing the union for pretty girls behind the bar. I thought the church was supposed to love everyone no matter what you wore but Margie whispered in my ear that it was blasphemous to dress like a hooker in the company of a priest. ‘Cheap and nasty spoils the party.’
Margie said I could still come over whenever I wanted and have Monte Carlo biscuits with Cottee’s orange cordial. Margie stroked my face and said she could give me jobs for pocket money now. That I could clip her nails and pick up the dog poo her neighbour’s terrier Anzac kept leaving under her roses. The veins in her hand ran across the surface of her skin like a kid had drawn on her with blue texta. A map with mountains and tracks that grew deeper every year. They felt nice to touch.
Mrs Hall from school came to the funeral. When she saw me her mouth opened to speak but then she just smiled with one side of her mouth. I also saw Allen and his mum. He gave me a handmade card. There was a lobster on it because that’s what he likes to draw at the moment. Its claws were holding a heart. Even Tammy who always calls me a retard was there. She sat at the very back and didn’t look at me once, just kept chewing the inside of her cheek like she was trying to whistle.
If you wanted to, you could go and have a look at Mum in her coffin. Her face was so beautiful. The lady in a funny hat who worked there said she would be in an endless sleep and wasn’t that a nice place to be. I wanted to say not if your mouth was covered in dirt and worms were turning you into compost. But I just touched her face softly and sang ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ by Serge. It wasn’t the same because there are two parts to the song. Pat said it was time to start so I kissed her on top of the head and blew over her eyes. The priest said some nice things about Mum. That no greater gift was she given than me.
He said it was sad that none of her family could come from France, but I know Mum left when she realised there was no one to stay for. Her own mother thought only of herself, and her brother René had stolen the inheritance, but Mum didn’t talk about money because that was vulgar. When the organ music played ‘Ave Maria’, Pat started to cry in that man kind of way: shoulders all shaking with silent sobs. Margie gave him one of her hankies with the roses sewed onto it. And before I knew it, I was swaying back and forth.
Sometimes things are so sad you just have to sway it out, like you’re giving yourself a lullaby. Margie’s niece said she knew how I felt, but she didn’t. The pounding behind my ears was a tidal wave of furious white noise, pushing me out of the pew and straight into that box. The one in the far-left corner of the church that looks like a wardrobe. Even though I was in the church I was not of the church because I was never baptised. Still, I just needed a dark space of my own. And if the man upstairs had a problem with that he could knock on the door and tell me himself.
The priest’s voice became muffled, which was just fine because I didn’t want to hear his words anymore. There were other things I could hear if I closed my eyes real tight and let my ears off the leash. Margie’s stomach gurgling. Tammy’s eyes trying to blink away tears she did not see coming. Allen moving his neck from side to side—the crunching sound it made because he sleeps on a pillow that is too high for his head. After the organ started playing again and people sang another song about lambs and blessed be thy name, Pat came over and told me to come out because they were going to put Mum in the ground. God never knocked on that box, not even once.