Tears of the Moon - Di Morrissey [210]
There was a sparkle in the old woman’s eyes that delighted Lily. ‘Ah, you’re one of our mob then. I f’ git your mumma’s name. She went south, never came back.’
‘Georgiana,’ prompted Lily.
‘Yeah, that right. Georgie we called ’er. Yeah, Georgie. Wild one she was.’ Biddy plopped into a canvas director’s chair and began unlacing her well-worn sandshoes.
‘Grandma is Mollie’s granddaughter or Minnie’s great-granddaughter. Gran worked with Olivia right up to the time she left town to live in Perth after the war. Show Gran the pendant.’
Lily again took the pendant from her bag and gave it to Biddy.
The old woman examined it carefully, but said nothing, giving Lily only a slight nod of acknowledgement as she handed it back. Lily was putting it in her bag when Biddy asked, ‘Yer got kids?’
‘Yes. Only one. Samantha.’
‘Well, bring ’er up ’ere t’meet family. Proper t’ing t’do that.’
Lily was speechless. That simple statement by Biddy, the invoking of family ties and responsibilities hit Lily like a blow to the body. Her mind whirled. How would Samantha react to all of this? She could barely cope with the reality herself. Biddy, that old black woman, was family—at least in Aboriginal culture she was family. The enormity of it all made her feel faint.
Rosie came to the rescue. ‘Now, Gran, Lily hasn’t had time to think about this family business. She only just found out in the last couple of days. Her mother never told her about us.’
Biddy hauled herself out of the chair. ‘Betta put them fish in the fridge. Yer comin’ for a feed t’night?’
‘Thanks, Biddy, I’d like that,’ said Lily, then exchanged a grin with Rosie.
That night, after dinner, Lily lay on the bed staring at the slowly revolving fan. Like the fan going round and round, her mind replayed the events of the day. The meeting with Rosie and Gran, the dinner, then the long talk with Rosie on the verandah about Aboriginal concepts of family and the complexity of kinship relations as they watched the moon swing over the bay. She also replayed the agonising emotional confusion that had been compounded by the meeting with Biddy. The old lady’s words echoed in her mind. You’re one of our mob then. She found herself pondering on Rosie’s comment about the difference between having Aboriginal blood and being Aboriginal. Did she really belong to Biddy’s mob? Was she really one of the family in spirit? Lily didn’t know the answers.
She looked at the telephone beside the bed and for a moment considered phoning her daughter, then her lover, then her best girlfriend, but dismissed each option as it presented itself. None of them could possibly understand what she was going through. It was her struggle, she realised, one she had to resolve alone. She had almost fallen into an exhausted sleep when a thought surfaced from the mists of her mind. Tomorrow she would go to Niah. Then she lapsed into a deep sleep.
In the morning Lily rang the car rental company and asked them to bring a good four-wheel drive around to the Continental. She took off along the red sand road with confidence. Unlike the first time she drove down this road, she was comfortable with the brightness of the sky, the softness of the orange talcum-like dust beneath the wheels, and the hot breeze that blew into the car.
As she headed north, Lily ran through the scenario of her life story once more, occasionally fingering the pendant that hung around her neck. How easy it was to accept her white Broome antecedents. How fascinating was the story of the history of their lives. They had struggled and won. But within that struggle lay a story of mixed races and entwined histories that had brought her to where she was today. Lily now understood why her mother had turned her back on her family, choosing to reject her heritage. In those times, a hint of mixed