The Lost Women

  Chapter 19

  Monday 21th November, 1988

  Dana Roberts is Sally Brown

  Journey Down

  I seemed to wait a long time for Peter Ruslen to return, but there was no clock on the wall and I had no watch, so I was clueless about how much time had actually passed. I sat on that slippery beige chair and my mind began to wander along roads to the past, and seek out the minefield of sadness and regret. I thought about my mother who had died after becoming an alcoholic and ruining her liver, and I felt empty; hollowed out --an imposter.

  My mother had been removed from her family. She was about eight years old when the authorities took her from her mother, a half Aboriginal woman who I never met. My grandmother. My mum was sent to the Parramatta Girl’s Homes, where she experienced a deep and visceral pain and cried every day for one week, longing for her mother and former life. Soon, she learnt never to cry again.

  I remembered once when my mother was standing cooking at our old, clapped-out, gas stove, and she mumbled to me these words:

  ‘I was dragged out of one reality into a different reality, which I didn’t want to be in. And ever after that, I always saw myself as being like a penguin in the desert, which could never get back to its melting home’.

  It was an odd thing to say to a young child. Me. As I couldn’t possibly understand the meaning of those words back then. But the words stayed with me, haunting me, until I really understood them.

  But what my mother really learnt was that vindictiveness and savagery existed on a previously unimagined scale. She and her other helpless inmates soon became adept at cleaning wooden floors, with a tooth brush; only to watch as they were immediately soiled, so that they could be cleaned again. It was a pointless, revengeful environment of fear and loathing. There was no education and my mother came out the other end damaged and functionally illiterate. All she had learnt was that those in charge were malevolent and ready to punish those who did not come from the ‘right places’, with abandon.

  I never knew my father, but he passed on his genes to me in such a way that nobody looking at me ever thought that I came from a long and noble line of Aboriginal women, who had inhabited this land for many thousands of years. And those few times that I had told others of my Indigenous ancestry, I had been told, ‘you don’t look like one’, or, ‘you’re not black’. And so, I remained quiet, and I blended in, while my poor mum suffered and bore the shame and the punishment that often comes to those who ‘look wrong’; may believe in different gods --or even, no gods at all.

  I don’t believe in any religion, or accept any dogma, other than, ‘treat others as you would like to be treated’. But when I really think about it, I often wish that there was really was some guiding goodness, somewhere in this world.

  My mum loved me, her blue eyed child. She told me matter-of-factly that the crow was my totem animal, and that, I should honour its ancient knowledge and its magic. Mum couldn’t remember much that was passed on to her from her mother, but what she did recall, she held close.

  However, what really sustained mum was the idea that one day she would be able to go home and find her mother, and her people. And by doing hard yakka as a cleaner, she was able to save up enough money for us to take this trip when I was five years old and she was twenty three.

  In the old car we drove for a night and a day, only to stop with great frequency to fill up the leaking radiator. But when we got there, to that hoped for place, we found only signs and fences for a great big open cut mine. And nobody could tell mum where her people had gone. Mum was never the same after that.

  And thinking of all this, I found that I didn’t have any tears left either. But I had been in this room so long that I could see that night was closing in; Peter Ruslen had not retuned and I needed to go home…That is, return to the grungy Bondi flat. I stood up and yawned and stretched and shook myself, trying to shake off all the sadness that had run through my veins. I needed to return to the present and regain my wits.

  I had to stay away from the lands of the past, but it was hard, because that is where memories of my mother lived. But, visiting this place too often, I knew, could eat away at my future.

  I picked up my handbag which contained the mobile telephone with the roving bug and silently, sinking into the plush carpet, I padded out of that room, closing the door softly behind me. I was alone in the long hallway, wondering which way I should go. I thought that perhaps I should try to find Peter Ruslen. But then I thought, maybe, I should just get out of this prison and catch a bus back to Bondi. I must have been standing there for a few minutes, when the maid who had served the tea emerged from the elevator at the end of the hall and I watched as she walked toward me.

  ‘Excuse me’, I said, ‘Mr Ruslen did not return…..could you tell me where I could find him’.

  The young girl stared at me blankly, and then averted her eyes and said mechanically, ‘Mr Ruslen is sleeping presently………You can find him on the next floor down in the red room….The third door on the left. Thank you.’

  I was soon zooming down in the lift and walking out into an almost identical hallway, of thick beige carpet, and mirrored walls, which gave me a feeling of vertigo and unreality, as I looked at the refracted, Picasso-like images of myself. Long, hanging, modern chandeliers, which resembled seaweed, hung low from the ceiling and various sculptures of giant, glass spiders sat on a metal pedestals, as I passed.

  I came to the third door, which was slightly open. I pushed it slowly and looked into a darkened bedroom. As my eyes slowly adjusted, I became aware that the prone figure of Peter Ruslen was stretched out on a scarlet quilt, on top of a huge, silver, sleigh bed. He was snoring really loudly and strangely. Gradually, I noted that the room looked like it had been trashed; a dressing table and its contents appeared to have been thrown to the floor, and a chair and various photos lay smashed upon the ubiquitous beige carpet. I walked in a bit further and noted that an almost empty bottle of whisky lay on its side, draining its remaining contents into the carpet….And then; I saw a packet of pills, the silver, foil packaging, almost empty.

  I tried to rouse Peter Ruslen by tapping his face, to no avail. I went into the ensuite bathroom and carried some water from the tap, cupped in my hands, and dumped it on his face. There was no response. He needed an ambulance.

  I pulled the mobile phone out of my handbag but there appeared to be no reception here; I threw the bag to the floor, and rushed out of the room, and looked wildly about. Where on earth would I find Mrs Ruslen, a staff member, or a working telephone in this great mausoleum? I decided to try to get to the kitchens, so I went back to the lift and down I went to the basement and retraced the steps I had walked with Peter Ruslen so recently. I came to the set of double doors leading to the ballroom, only to find they were locked. I banged and smashed my hands upon them, and made as much noise as I could, but no one came.

  So back I went. I travelled in the lift, one floor up. This was the floor where Mrs Ruslen had come out of a room, occupied by the disabled, Phillip Ruslen, and the woman who may have been June Roze. I sprang from the lift and saw the art work of the stainless steel, cartoon rabbit. I was in the right place. Calling out, ‘Mrs Ruslen, your son is in danger’, I began bashing my fist at what I believed was the door from which she had appeared, on Saturday night.