word count 986
©
Megan Sampson 2015
Unwanted,
unbranded, uninitiated
He
knew he was unwanted.
Locked
out of home at age nine,(nearly ten)
Turned
out.
Told
to 'go live' with 'that' grandma.
His
mother had always hated her too. She was so jealous of her.
Horace
guessed that she couldn't bear to share his father's love with anyone.
His
Grandma, his dead father's mother.
A
black woman constantly moaning and mumbling and murmuring in grief.
Wailing out loud.
He
wasn’t just unwanted, He was neither black nor white.
He
was 'unbranded' as his grandma would say.
He
would always be unbranded.Unmarked.
Unknown
to the black world.
He
was just a coffee colored quarter caste.
He
would never be taught the secret things by the elders,
nor cut with a
stone tool to mark him as one of them.
He
would never be made safe from the crocodile, or taught to talk to the
river and tell it to swell up and flood, or told how he could tell
the wind to stop, or the sky to rain.
His
Grandma mourned for that too.
Even though he was nearly full of
white blood, he was still hers.
He carried her blood.
Grandma would never send him away, but she was prone to criticism.
She
said things like, "you haven't even got a totem. Those white
fellas can't give you anything we give".
When
he responded, "well, why can't you give me a totem?", she
had said,
"I'm
only a gin, I got no right to give you one.
The old men have to do
that.".
"There's
no old men left.
We
have no clan. so why can't I give myself one then?"
She
shrugged.
He responded like a rebel.
"I'll
go out there and call a cockatoo. I'll ask him to be my totem."
So
he did. He decided to grab back whatever secrets he could.
He
set out to know the secrets. He would find out one way or another. He
would call the ancestors to teach him.
He
was angry, even with her.
She
was supposed to be part of the white world now, not sitting cross-
legged on the dirt by the her outdoor fire, clanging little sticks
together and chanting at the few mementos of her son.
She
wasn't eating, not washing and barely even taking a drink of water.
She
was sort of trance like.
Pointing
the bone at herself.
Willing
her body to die.
The
boy couldn't stand it.
He was so full of grief and anger, that he
yelled , "Die then, see if I care.."
He
had to find himself. Find those black bits and the white bits.
He
would keep his black bits secret and be a white boy to the world.
He
decided to always say he was a Maori,
He would never admit to being a quarter-caste aborigine again.
He
was in great grief, his grief swelled up inside and chocked him.
It
squeezed the life out of him,and made him angry.
He
wanted payback. He wanted to spew out the anger and make the world
pay.
He
missed his father, he missed his siblings. His younger brothers who
had become part of his little gang. He really missed his sister
Joycie. She had been like a little mother to him, the only person who
really cared about him since "that terrible day".
His
mother held such a deep seated anger.
She
never forgave him, but his father tried to
understand a four year olds jealousy. He remembered hearing him plead
with his mother. He stressed words like 'forgiveness', explained that little
Horace had not been responsible.
That he didn’t know what he was
doing.
His
mother was unmoved.
She
would never forgive.
His
'terrible deed' had closed a door on her heart.
"No,"
she had said. "I will never forgive him.
He
tried to burn his baby brother to death.
I
could hear Keithy screaming.
It
was me who had to crawl under the house and save him.
It
was me who had to smother the flames in his nappy. Luckily he had
peed in fright, other wise the burns would have been worse.
I
had to rescue my new born from that monster."
He
remembered his father kept trying to make her reconcile and forgive
the boy.
Then,
in desperation his father demanded it.
But she couldn't forgive.
She
was only able to pretend to tolerate him.
Behind
her veil of compliance her eyes always burnt like little fires of
hate. Then his father was hit on the head by a crane and slowly
became paralysed, then eventually died.
Horace
had been his one comfort. At eight he had nursed him, had always been
at his side and seen to his every need.
But
then when he died, his mother's hate was mixed with grief
and blame and surfaced again.
She
had even been jealous of how much his father had loved him.
She
was riddled with it. Jealously was a terrible scourge.
Since
she had thrown him out, she had forbidden his brothers and sisters to
see him. She insisted that they had nothing to do with "that
Horace". They were forbidden to give him their school lunches
when he waited near the Westmead school gate, but sometimes they
would sneak over and give him half a sandwich or sneak him an apple.
He
had given up school. The constant cuts of the cane
had made him all the more rebellious.
He
wandered. He stole. One lucky day he was caught and sent to the
kid's jail.
It
was luck, because there was an old school teacher there who saw his
potential, and gave him a few crumbs of attention and praise.
He called himself 'Lucky' and boasted, "Better to be born lucky, than rich."
Nevertheless,
by the time he was 21, he had been classified as an habitual
criminal.
Who
or what could save him?
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