Taboo by Kim Scott

Author:Kim Scott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Published: 2017-06-28T04:00:00+00:00

II

MUM N DAD

‘I never tried to keep you away from him, Matilda.’ Tilly’s mother, Ellen, braced herself against the steering wheel and stared straight ahead, but she was not really looking at the cars parked all around them nor at the towers and walls topped with barbed wire. Ellen wore trackpants, t-shirt, scuffs; as she had already told Tilly, she was not going to be visiting anyone in prison. She turned to Tilly and – perhaps it was the result of being about to meet her own father for the first time – Tilly saw her as a stranger: the sloppy clothing, the sunglasses so large they might have been designed to hide behind, the dry and freckled hands on the steering wheel. ‘But,’ her mother continued, ‘he is in prison. He’s spent most of his life there. He said himself, he didn’t want any of his children to see him in “lock-up”.’

‘Other children?’

‘Well, yes. Not with me, Tilly.’ Her mother sniffed disdainfully.

‘I have brothers and sisters?’

‘Apparently. Tilly, he has asked to see you. I can’t . . . I would have told you, I guess, in good time, and I’m sorry they got in touch before I had a chance to tell you.’

‘How long were you going to wait then, Mum?’

‘Well, perhaps I did wait too long, but count your blessings, darling – you’ve been lucky enough to have a good man be a father to you. While you let him, Tilly.’

‘Mum. He’s your boyfriend, not my father.’

Ellen had brought Tilly up on her own. Tilly had never known her biological father, and certainly hadn’t known he was an Aborigine until recently. A Noongar, they said. Tilly’s first thought was it made her really Australian, but of course it was more than that. Then she realised she knew nothing, not even herself. She hadn’t met many Aboriginal people. But then again, it seemed you couldn’t necessarily tell, not by looking at them. Herself, for instance? Was she?

Tilly had not been to a prison before. Her mother again said she’d wait in the car. She and Tilly’s father had not known one another long, she told Tilly. It didn’t work out. He went to prison soon after they met. Her mother kept looking away from her.

‘What did he do, Mum?’

‘Best if you ask him that, don’t you think, Matilda? Wouldn’t you want it like that, if you were him? Not me telling you?’

Tilly said, ‘Shall we go?’

It had been arranged that an aunty of Tilly’s – aunty on her father’s side, of course – would accompany Tilly to see her father, since she was still not yet eighteen years of age.

‘Yes, you go, Tilly. You don’t need me.’ She accompanied her daughter until they reached a roofed but otherwise open area with a few timber tables and benches, just outside the Visitors’ Office. A woman was waiting at one of the tables. Aboriginal woman, Tilly reckoned, and quite young.

‘I think you’ll be right from here, Tilly,’ her mother said, turning back.

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