The Token

Two excerpts from Kerosene Creek

CHAPTER 7: Our first view of Jindy’s mother, May Kelly.

Fergus Kelly, a kind-hearted blacksmith in Parramatta, is in need of a wife because he has unexpectedly acquired the baby son of his deceased cousin Kathleen, who did not survive the long voyage across the sea from Ireland. Fergus is a generous man and a master craftsman, but he lacks the talent to bring up a child, or the time to go courting a wife. His blacksmith’s shop is on the main street of Parramatta. On one side is the Shamrock Hotel, owned by a sour-faced landlady by the name of Ma Geoghan. She advises Fergus to leave the baby outside the church door so the priest will have to stop scratching his behind and do his duty and find a place in the orphanage for the wee mite. To the other side of the smithy is Pak’s Chinese Laundry. (Motto: In Chinese, Pak mean white, like your shirt.) Mrs Pak introduces Fergus to Mr Lim, a marriage broker who, for a pound, guarantees to find a suitable wife to care for both himself and the child.

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The baby is christened Malachy. When Malachy is 18 and May 32, Fergus dies in an accident. May discovers she is pregnant and Malachy is the father. To escape charges of murder and incest, they flee to Kerosene Creek, where Jindy is born.

CHAPTER 29: Pictures pf May

At first, Ma says she has no memory of herself before Fergus. She says her life began when the greatcoat came off. I make up stories about who she was and where she came from, based on what I am reading at the time. When Da brings home an illustrated history of French explorers from Mr Pratt’s bookshop, I decide Ma is the daughter of a Gallic adventurer and a cannibal princess. Later, when I come across a daguerreotype of a young and pretty nun somewhere in the outback, standing beside a tall, athletic Aboriginal man holding spears and boomerangs, I decide Ma must be the offspring of that scandalous liaison. At another time, I show her a coloured picture of a little brown girl in a house full of half-undressed women in a place called New Orleans.

“That’s more like the ‘me’ I remember,” she says.

“Where is New Orleans?” I ask.

And one day she admits to snatches of memory from life before the greatcoat.

“What I remember of my childhood is living in one house of women after another. Men visit us in the evenings, and we have the day to ourselves. We go on picnics and paint our toenails and play games. The men are sailors, soldiers, gold prospectors, Chinese cooks, and teenage boys with their first shilling. Each of the women is named after a month of the year and she has a brass token with a hole and the month stamped on it. She gives it to Madame when she goes upstairs with a man. When I turn fourteen Madame says my name will be April and gives me my own token. I wash the floors, bring the drinks, and dance for the men.

“Did you play with the men, too?” I ask, shocked at my question, because I have a rough idea of what games are played in those houses.

“I was so ugly, the men didn’t want me near them. I was all bones and teeth, and my red hair scared the Chinese. That’s why Mr Lim sold me to Fergus. I should have given my token back, but I kept it and Mrs Pak said April was unlucky and changed my name to May.”

Malachy was May’s miracle stepson, more like a little brother, and how she marvelled at every moment of his development; how they would get into bed together, and he would read to her because she never learned. She talks about Fergus’s rough-and-ready affection, about the insults and tricks that Ma Geoghan heaped on her, and about the kindness of Mrs Pak, the gruff Chinese laundress. But all she can say about the terrible day that the police officer’s horse kicked Fergus in the head is that she blames herself. She should have held its head more tightly, spoken to it more, and seen the kick coming. On her worst days, she fears she might have willed it to happen because she loved Malachy so much.

She tells me about life in Kerosene Creek before I was born, when she became bigger and heavier and more awkward every day but worked beside Malachy, making mud bricks for the house, cutting timber for the joists, harnessing Clodhopper to plough a garden, and all the time being pestered by Mr Orbiston about when Malachy would finish his damn house and start work on the funicular railway, or his invitations to spend the night in the Manor when Malachy is away. She tells me stories about how the glanfhuil, the original shareholders in the co-op, were suspicious of new members and made cruel remarks about the curse of mixed race. How they called Malachy and May Johnny-come-latelies and blow-ins and refused to lend them a hand or to sell them eggs or meat. She describes how Mrs Charlotte Duff organised morning teas for the expectant blow-in mothers like Gertie McGowan and Lucy McClure. They exchanged old wives’ tales about how to interpret your baby’s kicks—what is he trying to tell you? How to predict a baby’s sex using a divining rod or tea leaves, or dreams. Mrs Duff, who already had five babies, told the new mothers what to expect at their next stage of pregnancy and how to breathe and push on the big day.

Ma describes her three-day labour and the skill and confidence of the old Black woman who saved both our lives. She tells stories about the family that camped by the creek that we gave the sugar bags to drape on the roofs of their humpies to keep them dry. She describes her dark time after I was born, when she couldn’t bear to touch me or be touched by Malachy. When some days were so miserable, she thought about drowning herself in the billabong. How she lay in despair, thinking about how she had killed Fergus and the certainty that she had ruined Malachy’s life. It is Aunty Sugarbag who recognises the power of her brass token—she calls it gurugulaŋ in her language. She encourages May to forget Mrs Pak’s prediction and to trust that the Chinese symbol stamped on it means good fortune. Gradually May feels as though a heavy blanket has been lifted from her soul, and finally, she comes to accept who she is. Her origins, her divided life, pre- and post-Fergus, no longer matter. She is neither Irish, nor Aboriginal, nor Chinese, nor anything else. This is a new nation and she will call herself Australian, and she doesn’t care what other people say about her.

A FEW QUESTIONS FOR FEEDBACK

• Do you understand Mrs Pak’s reasoning for changing the name from April to May?
• Do you need an illustration of the token in order to understand the story?