I came down from Hedland last year to stay with my relatives in Perth. They’ve got a beautiful house, with curtains and a doorbell and a fence and garage. Uncle Ted gets on the piss a bit, but he’s ok really. Mum used to say, “Y’ll end up unpackin’ boxes behind Woolworths if y’don’t get edjucation. Get edjucated or y’buggered.” So I went to a special college here that gives educations.

I caught the bus. The people at the bus stop looked like they’d been stuffed and mounted. Like stuffed blowfish: all red and blown up and bristly. No one talked to anyone. One in particular had big puffy eyes. Whenever I sat next to her, she’d start sniffing and scratching like a dog with fleas.

That didn’t put me off. I had a feeling that if I missed a day at college I’d never go back and I’d miss out for good.

Then one night we had a party. All my uncles and aunts and cousins from Pinjarra drove up. We made a bonfire in the backyard out of fence pickets. Uncle Ted threw on the old TV. “Bloody thing never works,” he said.

“Y’aughta sell it, Ted.”

“Why? Y’couldn’t even use a thing such as an ashtray?”

All the kids were squealing around in their pyjamas like mad buggers. We dragged the sofa out so the old people could sit near the fire. Everyone else sat on the ground. The grog flowed.

“Have another beer, Maureen.” Uncle Ted kept filling my glass.

“Y’won’t be up f’school tomorra, Maureen.”

“Hey Maureen, give’s a song!”

On the booze

I played my guitar and the kids sang along like a trained choir. We even drowned out a football argument among the men. They jumped about chanting team cries and telling legends of great goals. At one o’clock I crept away to bed. It wasn’t long before Uncle Michael found me. “Ay, Maureen.” I could feel his breath singeing my eyebrows.

“I gotta go t’college t’morra, Uncle.”

“No y’don’t.”

“C’mon Maureen, give’s a song.”

Back at the fire, everyone was shouting, enjoying themselves into a stupor. I played and drank. Suddenly it was morning. The yard looked as if an army had been through. Bodies and ash and broken glass lay about. My head throbbed. I picked my way through the house and across to the bus stop.

The blowfish were there. I slumped down on the seat and leant against the one with puffy eyes. She began sniffing and scratching. I closed my eyes.

Now I am a university student and Mum’s real proud. A while ago we held a street march against apartheid in South Africa. I was the only Aborigine present there.

“Clean up yer own backyard first!” one bloke yelled from a pub veranda.

I stepped out of the march. “I am your backyard,” I shouted back.

He went inside.

 

(Published in New Woman; June 1990)