Goodbye Lullaby. Jan Murray
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mother looked directly at the religious woman. ‘Nursing at RPA. That’s what we're telling folk if they ask,’ she said, jamming her clutch purse firmly up under her arm as if there would be no argument. ‘It’s best that way,’ she added, casting one last cleaning woman’s critical eye around the big carpeted office before walking out.
Best for whom, she'd wanted to ask but hadn’t because she did not want to hear her mother telling the stranger any more lies. Did not want her talking about her father’s way of dealing with this thing, his weakness. No angry words like her mother’s rantings. Her mother’s treatment of her, she could deal with. It had been her father’s silence, his coldness, and his emotional abandonment of her that had broken her heart and made her realize how much she was losing.
And so, a pallid kiss, and the lie spoken in front of a nun was the sum total of their farewells that day.
She had watched her mother disappear through the office door, heard her click-clacking down the corridor. She understood she had just observed a woman relieved to have dumped her knocked-up daughter on the doorstep of St Anthony’s Home for Unmarried Mothers. And she knew, once out in the open again, her mother would not look back, but would hurry down the path on her clumsy cork-heeled wedgies from Burleigh Heads––past the hypocritical holy grotto––and jump on a train to Goodna where she would start spreading the word about her clever daughter being accepted for nursing at one of Australia’s finest teaching hospitals.
That would be all the world needed to know of their shame, until, one day, she would be expected to turn up at their front door with empty arms and perpetuate the lie.
The fact she had failed to do so was the reason the Christmas Day attempt at a reconciliation had been a fiasco. Did they ever ask themselves about their lost grandchild? Or like the universe itself, had they simply atomized him.
As for Jude, why even think about her, or where she might be tonight. Jude would not be aware of any birthday lottery or its significance. So much for their pact. Together, forever. Their son. No retreat. No surrender.
She gave a cynical laugh and slid down under the bathwater, holding her breath for an eternity.
–7–
New York City, 1971
Central Park, from the window of her ninth floor apartment on the Upper West Side looked spectacularly beautiful at this time of year; for those of a mind to consider it, thought Jude. She wasn't one of them. Not this morning. Not this early hour. Her thoughts were a continent away from the grand metropolis and its charms.
She stood, holding her cup and saucer, letting the brew grow cold as she surveyed the past through her window high above New York city.
They were two smart and happy girls back then, she and Miki as they walked to school, swinging their bags, kicking stones, punishing their Robin regulation black lace-up school shoes and taking for granted the majesty of the grey gums, the sunny skies and the vast open spaces. This morning she had an irrational yearning for eucalypts, not the imported ones in LA, but the true tall spindly Queensland bluegums.
She wanted to smell and hear the real thing, the crackling sound of the dry leaves and twigs beneath their feet as they tracked to St Brenden's. The pungent smell of eucalyptus and citronella oils when she and Miki rubbed the leaves and held their hands to their faces. Sunburnt faces. Schoolgirl faces. The faces of two hopeful teenagers with big plans
Standing at the window in her air-conditioned apartment high above the world's busiest metropolis, she continued to stir her sweet milky tea, lost in memories of scorching summer days back home. Skies filled with smoke from bushfires up in the hills. Dry gums and undergrowth, a volatile mix.
She laid down her cup and saucer, lit a cigarette and studied the lighted end. Bushfires served a special purpose in the life-cycle of the Australian Aborigines, Bernie had explained to her and Miki. Thanks to that spiritual woman, she knew a bit about the nature of bushfires. The spontaneous combustion, and how it played a part in regenerating the bush. The gums shed their bark every November and December, causing a thick carpet of inflammable material to lay about on the ground during the hot days, waiting for either the sun’s rays, or a lightening strike from a violent summer storm to ignite the dry bark and dead leaves, then the fires would take hold and rage, destroying trees and denuding the landscape.
Bernie explained how the pods exploded in the heat, and with the ground beneath the burnt-out trees denuded, the hardy little seeds fell on good soil and took root. In the following seasons it would all begin again. New growth would spring up amongst the ashes during winter to replace the fire-ravished gums. An amazing regeneration. A natural cycle, and one only the Aboriginal populations appreciated enough to work with, she reasoned.
But of course, Miki had rushed in to the conversation that day with one of her poetry quotes, one about rainforests, recalled Jude. Tagore. Everything is born, grows, dies and is born again. She blew a series of smoke rings into the air, and observed them slowly floating to the ceiling on their way to becoming nothing.
She felt homesick. New York was her home and she adored New York, but the concrete landscape down below couldn't compare to the drama of the Australian bush.
But why, for fuck’s sake Jude Brenner are you thinking about all this, she quizzed herself as she stubbed out her cigarette, grinding it to a pulp in the vintage ashtray and burning the tips of her fingers in the process, why?
She lit another cigarette and checked her watch for the tenth time in as many minutes.
Most times, her days of growing up in Australia felt like someone else’s life story, thought Jude as she returned to the kitchen to make a fresh pot of tea, aware she was going to miss their staff meeting today, but knowing it wasn't as important as what was about to happen back home. There would be votes aplenty for the old boy's latest amendment anyway, and she was not about to forego this phone call.
She checked her watch, shook it to make certain the hands were traveling in good order. Precision timing would be everything. It would be Tuesday evening, the ABC news broadcast would shortly begin, and then the sports news, and then the weather forecast. The national broadcaster wasn’t her aunt’s channel of choice by any means but, never the less, she knew tonight, Poppy would have her television set tuned to the ABC, as arranged.
She went back to staring out the window and chided herself that nostalgia was a waste of time. And so was worrying about something over which one has absolutely no control. Never did, obviously. It had been Miki's call.
Was it because of the geographic distance that those early years of her life felt like someone else's story, or was it more to do with the the emotional distance she put between herself and her youth, to the extent her own daughter knew not to quiz her mother too closely about her years as a girl growing up in Australia. That girlhood was best left where it had perished.
Her thoughts turned to Tiaré. Her daughter was growing up fast. It happened. Particularly in this hot-house environment of New York. You turned your back for a minute and next thing you knew was that the unsteady little toddler taking her first steps towards you was the same one tottering towards you on high heels. Standing up to you, giving you lip.
Her ex was an asshole and the twenty-something he was tied up with was an imbecile, the pair of them a bad influence on Tiaré. She told him as much when he radioed in to check on how their daughter’s flight had gone.
‘Any flight gets you down’s a good one,’ she'd said. ‘But while I’ve got you, buster, let me remind you; you’re her father. Start acting like it!’
Their daughter had returned from Hawaii last August wearing make-up and nail varnish and informing her mother she would be referring to her from now on as ‘Jude’.
‘You reckon, kiddo?’
The jaunty adolescent and she had stood cooling their heels at the cab rank. ‘I don’t think so, sweetheart. And don’t try it on, what’s more.’
Her beautiful child––all coltish limbs and cinnamon