The following is in excerpt from Maleny author Patty Beecham’s recent early memoir, Growing up Rocky, based on her family life in Rockhampton and Central Queensland.
This Bilo Life
In Year Two, I had met, and liked, twin girls in my class, and their mother worked at a local granary, common in the rural town. Once a week, I would ride home with them and be greeted with lollies, a small soft drink, and ice cream. It was like a kids’ party each time I visited. I had no idea people actually lived like this. The smell of mice and stored corn under cover filled my senses and we happily played for hours until it was time to go home. It was a different world. At some stage, I was telling Mum about my day, and again found myself talking to her back. “Mum,” I said softly. “If you don’t want to listen, why did you bother having me? Why did you bother?” and I went into my bedroom and lay there quietly, thinking it all through. Was I wanted here? Was I loved? Was I loved enough? When would I be happy? Why did she bother having me, when clearly, she showed no interest? What would I have to do, to be involved in the family life, and my parents? I could see how other mothers treated their children and wondered why I didn’t see that same warmth within my own family? Why was mum such a cold fish? Even at the tender age of seven, I felt I was growing up within a group of strangers, who had nothing in common with each other. I felt I had no choice but to hold on, somehow grow myself up, and then I could leave. The sooner, the better! In hindsight, mum was recovering from her illness and probably beginning to become depressed, and anxious. She had married a soldier, who became a pearler on the luggers on Thursday Island, then a Mission Supervisor on Cape York, and now an Anglican priest. It wasn’t a life she had chosen. Indeed, it was a life that dad had chosen, either. The life of a priest, chose him. God chose him, and he accepted it. Mum felt she had to behave in a certain way, from the sharp-eyed congregation who analysed whatever she did. Although mum was a loving supporter to Dad, she was also a strong agnostic, open-minded enough to study the world’s great religions: Buddhism, Hindu, and so on, not just the Christian stream of religion.
Sitting with Dad as he sipped his beer one afternoon, I said: “If we are all sheep, I want to be a part of the flock, but I want to be a pink sheep, a blue sheep, any coloured sheep.” It was my childish way of realising that I was different from the others, and desperate to fit in, but on my terms, on my conditions.
We seemed so disjointed; I felt I was spinning in a wobbling orbit with no direction. I determined that whatever happened, I would be my own best friend, and be honest, and back myself. If I didn’t, who else would? I became the cat who walked alone, and I learned to be a part of the family, but there was always the door, that mysterious door, that beckoned me. I had no idea where it would lead, but I would push it open one day and find out for myself. Meanwhile, I had to survive the perceived aloofness of my family.
I stared at the ceiling, dry-eyed, until I slept.
****
Under St Gabriel’s church, there are lions that want to eat you if you are silly enough to fall and roll into their trap. My brothers pointed out the antlion traps as we were building mud canals, scraping and trapping the dirt, directing the rainwater under the church. Two kittens joined us and began to scratch up the soil for their toilet.
“I’m going for lunch,” yelled Chris.
“Me too! Let’s go, it’s boring here anyway,” said John, and just like that I was on my own, to face the invisible ants or lions or creatures that lived in the moonlike depressions, waiting for me to roll in. I wondered how long it would take to eat me. Probably a long time. Tears came as I pondered my fate.
Grabbing both kittens under one arm, I duck-waddled my way out to the daylight, straight into a cobweb. By the time I made it inside the kitchen, for a late lunch of bread and scrape, I was exhausted from crying.
“Did you run into a spider, Pat?” questioned Mum.
“Yes,” I sobbed, “and the web was all over my face.”
I cried harder at the memory.
Mum seemed nonplussed. I felt so unloved. Didn’t she care about me at all? When would I ever get my mother’s attention? “Why did you bother having me?” I sobbed. Mum remained silent.
Bread and scrape lunches were the worst. It was whatever you wanted on a piece of bread. Who knows what I wanted? Not me. I went to my bedroom and played dolls with the kittens, pushing them into a pram with a blanket. They soon fell asleep. As John and Chris were altar boys for Dad, they were used to being smuggled into the Sunday morning Service, hidden under their robes, and released at the most crucial part – Communion. As the congregation came up for the Offering, the kittens’ paws would come out, swiping at whomever passed by, usually resulting in a surprised shriek from the ladies, and a stern glare from Dad.
The rain had made my favourite bottle-tree cubby too wet to climb. It would have to wait for another day. It was my favourite place to read the latest book Mum brought home for me. Instead, I ate two plums for my lunch. That’ll do. I looked at the ballerina picture I painted this morning at 5 am. My favourite water colour was called New Blue, and every dancer had a blue tutu. It gave me a lot of pleasure to rise earlier than anyone and have that silence of time to myself. Everyone slept. Didn’t they know the sun rose? Couldn’t they hear the birds? As Dad would say: “God’s Dawn Chorus.”
Dad stuck his head around the corner of my bedroom: “Come and help us make lamingtons, love. Hop to it,” he grinned.
Making lamingtons sounded a lot more fun than I was having with the cats, who had now woken up and were hungry. In the church hall, a production line had been set up, with cakes sliced into large sized lamingtons, and then bowls for chocolate dipping, and a coconut station where the pieces would be rolled. I was stupidly placed on chocolate dipping. Big mistake. Within minutes, chocolate ran down my skinny arms, covered my hands, some landed on my chin, and across my face. It was hardly my fault, and I was soon dispatched to the coconut rolling. What could possibly go wrong? Big mistake. Again, clouds of coconut and bits of cake drifted across the hall and floor. Stoic church ladies concentrated on making as many lamingtons as possible in the shortest time available. They were grim-faced.
You could tell where I was at any given moment. Simply look for the chaotic mess within the quiet and ordered calm of the fund-raising production line. That’s where I was. It wasn’t fair.
Not only had I been abandoned to my own horrific fate under the church, and offered a lousy lunch, now I was in trouble because, well, bowls of chocolate and cake! Need I say more?
With Dad preoccupied, the boys took off back to the church vestry. It was their chance to get stuck into the altar wine and eat some communion wafers. Some people had all the fun, and it wasn’t me.
I licked my fingers carefully, then stuck them back into the chocolate.
