Becoming Kirrali Lewis Read online

  First published 2015 by Magabala Books Aboriginal Corporation,

  Broome, Western Australia

  Website: www.magabala.com Email: [email protected]

  Magabala Books receives financial assistance from the Commonwealth

  Government through the Australia Council, its arts advisory body.

  The State of Western Australia has made an investment in this project

  through the Department of Culture and the Arts in association with

  LotteryWest. Magabala Books would like to acknowledge the generous

  support of the Shire of Broome, Western Australia.

  This manuscript won the State Library of Queensland’s 2014 black&write!

  Indigenous Writing Fellowship, a partnership between the black&write!

  Indigenous Writing and Editing Project and Magabala Books.

  Copyright © Text Jane Harrison 2015

  Author photograph © Dominic Grounds

  The author asserts her moral rights.

  All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes

  of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under

  the Copyright Act, no part of this publication may be reproduced by

  any process whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher.

  Designed by Tracey Gibbs

  Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press, South Australia

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

  Harrison, Jane, 1960- author

  Becoming Kirrali Lewis/Jane Harrison

  9781922142801 (paperback)

  Aboriginal Australians--Ethnic identity--Fiction

  Adoptees--Identification--Fiction

  Life changing events--Fiction

  A823.4

  With fierce love to my daughters, Savannah and Nova,

  and to Dominic, my partner in everything.

  And to Peter Seidel. You helped me and I haven’t forgotten.

  One

  Here I was: Kirrali Lewis. Through a pair of ornate wrought-iron gates was one of the oldest universities in the country. Our paths had just intersected. It was the 10th of March 1985 and I, little black duck, was about to step through those gates to embark on a law degree.

  I tried to burn the moment into my brain. I could almost smell the history of the place. I walked through the gates and my reverie was broken.

  It was like a market at closing time. Music boomed through loudspeakers. Brightly clothed students clustered in groups of twos and threes, laughing and chatting. Dozens of university clubs were spruiking — brandishing show bags and tempting students with their offers.

  ‘Join the debating club, The Dominators, and learn how to win every argument — even with your parents. Essential for all law students.’

  ‘Calling all caffeine addicts. Join the Chocolattes, for all things coffee and chocolate. Try a chocolate-covered ant.’

  ‘The Trekkie’s club. For Star Trek fans … We are the club to join. Resistance is futile.’

  ‘Law student?’ He was at my right elbow.

  I nodded.

  ‘I knew it.’

  I looked down at my clothes — white shirt, grey skirt and dark leggings. I looked the part? That was awesome.

  ‘It’s the law diary you’re carrying.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He started to guide me in the direction of the law table when I felt a tug on my other elbow.

  ‘Not so fast. She’s ours.’

  I looked at him. Dreadlocks, bare feet. Not my kind at all.

  ‘I’m from the Koori Club.’

  ‘Koori?’

  ‘Yeah. We’re a politically aware Aboriginal cooperative. ’

  I shook my head. ‘It’s my first day here.’ I gave the no-thanks smile I reserved for people begging on the street. ‘And I’m not one bit interested in politics.’

  The law dude raised his eyebrows and once again tried to steer me towards the right.

  But dreadlock guy wouldn’t let go. He stepped in front of me, blocking my path. ‘Looked in the mirror lately, girl? You gotta be interested in politics.’

  I flushed hot. I hated people making generalisations. ‘I didn’t realise that the genes responsible for the colour of my skin made me political,’ I said. What I really felt like saying was ‘take a chill pill’.

  He must have read my mind. ‘Okay, I’ll chill. But you’ve got attitude, sister. We’re fighting for your rights. Agitating to get more Aboriginal students in places like this.’

  ‘Well, my advice is that they should study really hard, just like I did. Ace their exams, just like I did. Then they’d have no trouble getting into university,’ I said loudly.

  The law dude started a slow clap and a few people joined in, while other students shook their heads and tut-tutted. I pushed my way through the spruikers for Christian clubs, ski clubs and drama groups, all trying to sign me up. I didn’t want to join the Midnight Movie Club. I was here to achieve.

  When I turned and looked back, I saw dreadlock guy standing alone like a rock in a river while groups of students flowed around him. I felt a jolt of embarrassment. My first five minutes at uni and I’d already chucked a wobbly.

  I was twelve before I realised I was different. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t looked in the mirror and noticed that I was the colour of Vegemite, while my friends were the colour of white bread.

  In my small town, the other girls at primary school were third or fourth generation Aussies. Some even had Dutch, Italian or Polish surnames but in those days we were more likely to group each other into those who owned horses and those who didn’t. What we looked like was much less important than how many A’s we scored on our school report. Race was a thing you went flat out trying to win on sports day. It had nothing to do with skin colour or where you came from.

  So it wasn’t until my first year at high school, a fifteen-minute bus ride away, that I became aware of how different I was. For the first time, there were more people I didn’t know than I did.

  ‘What country are you from?’ asked a freckled, curly-haired girl while we were queuing up to buy doughnuts from the cafeteria.

  ‘Australia,’ I replied.

  ‘No you’re not,’ she said confidently. ‘My dad says black people come from Africa. And they should go back there.’

  ‘I am Australian. An original Australian. I’m Aboriginal.’ In my head there was no right or wrong about that. I just was.

  I was at the start of the queue by then and the pretty lady in the lilac twin-set behind the counter was asking me what I wanted. I couldn’t choose between the doughnut with chocolate icing and the one with the hundreds and thousands. We didn’t have anything like that at primary school, just Sunnyboys and Wagon Wheels. But the girl at my shoulder didn’t know when to stop.

  ‘You’re not Australian,’ she whispered. ‘You’re a liar.’

  I swung around, intending to stare her down but the words shot out of my mouth. ‘Well, you’re a moron — and so is your dad.’ The way she howled anyone would have thought I’d given her one of those right-hand jabs that my brother Tray had taught me.

  The cafeteria lady changed from pretty to pretty damn angry. It seemed she was the freckled brat’s mother. I found out later that she was on the school board and was friends with the principal, who I got to meet rather suddenly.

  I thought that the girl would be the one who was punished — after all she had called me a liar. But when I tried to explain what had happened, the principal just cut me off. I ended up with detention for a week and I missed out on my doughnut.

  The tuckshop episode did teach me to keep my mouth shut though. Secondary school was full of lessons like t
hat. I learnt not to question my history teachers when they asked who discovered Australia: ‘Captain James Cook, sir’. And the first man to cross the Simpson Desert: ‘doh, Simpson, miss’. My mother and father were always telling me — well, they tried to, anyway — a different version of history.

  By the time I was a teenager, my life out of school was just as educational. I learnt to ignore the remarks when I walked down the street with my parents. Once I even got strange looks when an Aboriginal family stopped off in town. The skinny black kid in the all-white family. Kirrali Lewis. Little black duck.

  My encounter with dreadlock guy had left me unsettled. I went off to the first of my lectures but I couldn’t concentrate. Why did people have to categorise? So what if I was black? Did that mean I had to fight every cause championing black people?

  I tried to tune into the lecture. The baggy-pants-to-match-his-baggy-chin dude was talking in a pompous voice about how we were the ‘elite’ and that we were the ones who would ‘take our place in a changing world where leadership required the highest professional standards and an ability to adapt and be entrepreneurial’.

  I was looking around the lecture hall when my eyes rested on someone down the front who I had hoped I would never see again. Adam Rogers.

  When I was sixteen, I had a mad crush on him. Adam had black eyes and milky skin, and floppy black hair that fell over one eye. He went to an exclusive boys’ school that just so happened to be on the same bus route that I used to get to my not-so-exclusive school. Every afternoon, he would be sitting in the same seat halfway down the back. I would sit across the aisle and one seat behind him so I could gaze at the back of his neck. I didn’t think he ever noticed me, or even knew my name, but his name was scrawled all over my school books. On the last day of year eleven, he sat next to me.

  ‘Would you see a film with me. During the holidays. You’re not going away for the holidays.’

  He spoke softly but his questions were like statements. And he said ‘film’ rather than ‘movie’.

  Who could afford to take six kids on a holiday on an abbatoir worker’s wage?

  ‘Er, no.’ I stifled a giggle. He looked puzzled at my response.

  ‘I mean no, we’re not going away. And yes ...’

  I gave him my phone number but he didn’t call. I did get a Christmas card sent from the Whitsundays with a teddy dressed up as Santa on the front. He wrote:

  Dear Kirrali

  I really wanted to take you out but my dad thinks it’s best if I don’t right now because I’m about to start exams. I have to get good marks to get into law. I hope you enjoy the holidays.

  With regards from Adam

  With regards ... I kept the card in my undies drawer but from then on I rode my brother’s rusty old bike to school.

  Now here he was again, taunting me with his graceful white neck. Except this time I was immune to it, I promised myself. This time I had bigger fish to fry. I was headed for success.

  Two

  Getting an education wasn’t the only thing on the agenda that first day. There were fees to be paid, elective subjects to finalise and fellow students to check out. I wanted to know who I was up against.

  After handling all the administrative stuff and waiting in queues for what seemed like hours, I rushed over to the main lawn. My best friend, Martina, was also starting and we had arranged to meet. What I didn’t count on was the other thousand or so students who had also planned to catch up. After fifteen minutes of fruitless searching, I gave up on finding her and sat down to eat lunch on my own. Things weren’t going to plan, I thought, as I munched on my sandwich. Oh well, just roll with the punches, as Mum would say.

  My mum was, and is, amazing. Dad, too. Four kids of their own and they still found the time and love, and whatever else it took, to adopt another two — me and my little sister, Beatrice. I was just a tiny baby when the Lewis’s adopted me. Kids at school would ask me what it was like to be adopted and I’d tell them it made me proud. When I was about five, I remember telling my Aunty Rose how special I was because Mum and Dad had picked me out. I was a bit confused about the details though. The day before we had gone to the lost dogs’ home and picked out Finn. Perhaps the experience of Mum telling me all the dogs needed a home, and that we had to choose just one, made me think that’s where I’d come from too. Every Christmas when the family got together, they’d say, ‘remember the time Kirrali told Aunty Rose she’d been chosen at the lost dogs’ home’. It was one of those family jokes that always raised a laugh.

  After my solitary lunch, I went to check out the library where a bunch of student services organisations were set up outside to talk to students. This time I was singled out again by the Koori Club.

  ‘Hey, sis,’ said a girl behind the table. She was older than me and was tall and slim, with long, light brown crinkly hair and the most beautiful face. ‘I’m Erin. Can we help you with Abstudy, literacy support, legal advice, that sort of thing?’

  Literacy support? Did she have any idea of the scores I had got in my final exams? I shook my head.

  Just then Martina bounced up.

  ‘What about housing? Have you got a place to stay yet?’ Erin continued.

  ‘Not quite.’

  ‘There’s an Aboriginal hostel right near the uni.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll be right.’

  ‘Well, then, what about Abstudy?’

  This Erin chick wasn’t going to give up. Maybe she was one of those people addicted to helping others. (I found out later she was a social work student — that figured.) But I didn’t need help.

  ‘I haven’t applied for Abstudy, just the Tertiary Education Assistance Scheme allowance,’ I said firmly.

  ‘Oh, we can fix that, that’s not a problem.’

  ‘But I don’t want Abstudy,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to be treated differently from anyone else.’

  ‘Hello?’ Another girl behind the table lobbed in to the conversation. She had a scowling face and an attitude to match. ‘You’re Aboriginal. Haven’t you noticed you’re treated differently every day of your life?’ Her voice was thick with resentment.

  I could feel my skin prickling like I was about to break out in hives but I tried to be cool. ‘You just have to prove yourself. That’s what I do and it works out fine.’

  ‘Don’t you think you should get a little compensation to make up for everything they’ve taken away?’ she said. ‘Like some positive discrimination for a change?’

  I gritted my teeth.

  Martina had been observing the to-and-fro between me and the others as if she was watching a top-seeded tennis match.

  ‘Kirrali, you should so sign up with these guys.’ said Martina. ‘I would.’

  Erin giggled good-naturedly. ‘Leave her,’ she said. ‘She can make up her own mind.’

  I stared at her. Mum was always saying that.

  ‘And you can’t sign up. You’ve either got it or you haven’t,’ said Erin to Martina with a wink.

  Martina began to make some joke about discrimination but I was already dragging her away. ‘I don’t want to get involved with those people,’ I said under my breath.

  ‘Those people are your people,’ she said.

  I didn’t have to reply. My glare said it all.

  ‘Oh, lighten up, Kirrali,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to be an Aboriginal if you don’t want to.’ She burst out laughing and I punched her on the arm. Only my oldest friend could get away with a comment like that.

  Martina and I have been friends since the year dot. She’s the life of the party — outrageous, outspoken and always making a difference. You know, right up there with Save the Whales and Walk Against Want. I’m more quiet and studious and have usually got my nose shoved in a book.

  Maybe I was a bit like one of the pathetic animals she would later make a hobby of rescuing but I remember Martina ‘adopting’ me on my first day at primary school. Shyly sitting by myself, too scared to join in the noisy playtime games, she threw a
big red ball at me. I caught it and then, of course, I had to throw it back. That was her way of including me in the game that she and the other kids were playing. She’s been including me ever since.

  It was awesome that we’d managed to get into the same university — for a while Martina had tossed around the idea of going to acting school before deciding on political science. I was more excited about her being offered a place at uni than I was about me getting one. Our lecture times clashed but I knew we would go on being the best of friends. I couldn’t imagine it any other way.

  My lectures finished early, which was just as well because I needed to find somewhere to live. I’d been invited to stay with Dad’s cousin’s daughter (my second cousin?) out at Stony Point but what I really, really wanted was to be independent, to do the whole student lodging thing. I mean, what was the point of going to uni if I was still living out in the ’burbs?

  With that in mind, I had left my backpack of humble belongings in a Spencer Street Station locker. If I didn’t find anything, I could always catch the train back to my second cousin’s house in brick veneer country.

  I met Martina outside the law building but then we walked around in circles for twenty minutes trying to find the student housing office.

  ‘You’ve left it pretty late to find student housing,’ Martina said.

  ‘There’ll be something,’ I said, more confidently than I thought.

  ‘How about the Aboriginal hostel?’ teased Martina. ‘Cheap rent and subsidised meals.’

  ‘Exactly. I don’t need a handout.’

  ‘Geez, I do,’ she said. ‘My parents are really going to struggle to put me through uni.’

  ‘Well, mine too,’ I said. ‘But I’ll get a part-time job.’

  ‘Good luck with that. Have you seen the queue outside the campus employment unit?’

  ‘I’ll manage.’

  ‘I’m sure you will. You weren’t voted ‘Miss Can-do’ for nothing.’ Martina was referring to the ‘awards’ at our secondary school graduation ceremony. The very same awards where Martina was voted ‘Ms Most Likely to Do the Unlikely’. But that’s another story.