FISH AND CHIPS
Archie Weller
SOMETIMES I can close my eyes and pretend I’m right away, all alone in the heaving clouds, up in the air, where there is peace and quiet and the warm sun lying beside me· like my girlfriend, kissing me before it goesto bed. Everything will be soft and red-yellow-purple, like everything good spilling across the sky. I will be right in the middle of it, playing with the wind and telling all my secrets (that I couldn't tell anyone, not even Mum) to the moon and stars.
Then Auntie Nira starts fighting with Mum or Uncle William, and I'm back home again.
Most1y, there are sixteen of us living at home. We're all Whittys together: there is no hope for us if we don't stick together. Mum was an Erwell, but she is one of our peop1e now.
Gwendoline came home after running away and Dad gave her a proper hiding. Her legs were black and blue and all swelled up. She was crying too much for me. I went to watch TV until it was my turn to get belted. .
Darryl and Louis have just come in, really pleased with themselves because they broke into a house and found $500. Tomorrow we'll have a wicked feed-up, and for that I'm glad, because Ihaven't eaten properly for a good three weeks. They found out Dad had come back to Mum, so they took away her Social Service monies, and we've been doing a real starve ‘cos Dad don't spend his dole cheque on anyone except himself.
Darryl tells how a big dog made Louis shout when it come for him. Darryl reckons Louis was swinging in that tree like a little monkey. Uncle William busts himself laughing at that. Louis is Uncle William's kid. He is only about nine, but he smokes like a chimney and when he is drunk he wants to fight everyone, even Dad or Clancy, who are both over six foot. I tell you, that little Louis can make you laugh. Now Darryl's learning him how to break into shops and steal cars. He's pretty good, too, because he is so small and black that no one sees him.
All Uncle Wi11iam does is laugh all day. Even when Auntie Nira broke a bottle over his head last night, he just laughed. He's mad, I reckon. I would have made Auntie Nira jump. She bosses us kids around and cheeks Mum, when Dad's not here. Jimmy said he'd take a machete to her one of these days, but I don't think he ever would. He just likes to hear himself talk. He's in Fremantle now, and I really miss him. He might not have been able to fight, but he was a solid dancer: his legs were rubber and his body was elastic, so Mum said. You should hear his impersonations of Elvis Presley and Humphrey Bogart.
But he assaulted a policeman who took him up into a back alley to belt him around.
Peter and Coran are huddled over by the window. They aren't talking or laughing, or nothing. They're on the run from work release. There is always a Whitty on the run; it's how life goes. Coran’s going to dye his hair black so he'll have a better chance of escape. His hair's all pure blonde and long and beautiful, like a moonbeam or the sunlight creeping through the trees. He was so proud of his blonde hair that is like a crown, really, I suppose, because we're black all over. Now he has to give his crown away, since there aren't too many blonde Nyoongah’s running around and he's too easy to spot.
Peter's just skinny and dirty and scared. Peter is Uncle William's other kid, my older cousin. He's the same age as Jimmy and they're good mates. When Jimmy was taken away, Peter went all to pieces. He thought he'd be the big man and help Corran steal a car. They were rolling it down the hill when Coran saw the munadj coming up the other way. So he jumped out and left Peter holding onto the passenger door. What the police van saw was a driverless car shoot past with a skinny bag of bones fluttering in the breeze like a flag at half-mast. Funny? We laughed for weeks, about that. Even now, if someone asks how Peter's stolen cars are, everyone busts a gut laughing.
But they still got caught.
They're out now, fora while, though. Coran stares at his feet and broods, while Peter doesn't even play cards; that's how scared he is. He mightn't read too good - none of us can, except the older ones - but he can do anything with a pack of cards. He's the best card cheat I know, except for Clancy. Clancy learned in jail when he had nothing better to do, then he came out and taught Peter, who never had anything to do. Coran and Peter only had another month to go, but they got itchy feet. Now they sit by the window all day, waiting for the police to come.
Dad's a Thursday Islander, abig bloke and a boxer once. He can still fight, but onlywhen he gets wild. Then everyone had better look out. Uncle Joey was a good fighter too, unti1 he got killed by a featherfoot. Last night, those girls played a spirit game and brought him back. I was thinking of ghosts all night and when a sheet flapped out on the line, I nearly turned white for good. After that, I gotinto bed with Clancy.
Sally thinks she's really important because she has been all the way through school and has a job typing. But she won't give us any money; she doesn'twanttoown us now. She lives in a flat by herself, and is having a baby by a white bloke. Do you think he cares?He's gone awayup north and he won't be back, either. Sally will be back, though. She can't stay away from home forever. No one can.
Gloria's got two babies, and she's only seventeen.
She's Uncle Wi1liam's only daughter(at least until he and Auntie Nira get together and stop fighting). Her man is in Fremantle, right now, for stea1ing cars. He's good to Glory and hardly ever beats her around. When he gets out he's going to get a job as a mechanic and settle down in a house; just the two of them, and the babies. That's his dream.
Those little babies are fun and we all love them, especially Clancy. He can hold one in each hand, right up in the air, so they look like little brown bees buzzing around a black flower. Clancy makes them laugh every time and when they do, a slow smile will drift over his own quiet face.
He was put on parole six months ago, after doing time for killing one of those Moores. TheMoores' are enemies of ours from some fight long ago. Anyway, it was the Moores who killed Uncle Joey and burned out Cousin Paulie's stomach so he died, too. One night, in town, the Moore boys came picking Clancy and Coran and some other cousins of ours. Poooohh, boy! Clancy went wild and started throwing pool balls and smashing into those Moores with pool cues. I was only ten, so Clancy shoved me under a pool table. But I saw that fight.
Clancy was in jail for five years. Now he's grown up, with short hair and long sideburns. He told me, when he came out, ‘Artie, don't you ever go to jail, boy. Let them white blokes rub you in the dirt, spit on you, shit on you even. But you keep right out of jail. It's a bad place in there, brother.’
Clancy's big like Pad, and doesn't talk much. No one knows what he's thinking or what he's going to do, so he's. the most dangerous of us Whittys. On his face you can't see whether he is smiling or frowning, or what.
Our neighbours don't want to 'know us, really. Mum tries to keep the house clean, and us too. We have a bath every night but, as Darryl jokes, we never get any whiter. But it's not really a joke. No matter what we do to become like' white, we're still black, and that's what it's all about. We can't even have a fight or have our relations around without all our neighbours minding our business.
They tell us to get a job.
Dad did work on the railways until he got a bad chest from the colds we're always getting. Darryl was working in a me at store just down from our place, but he almost cut his fingers offwith one of those big knives they use, so he gave that job away. It was the first time Darryl had ever worked, heaving those big frozen kangaroos around. I went to take Darryl his lunch, so I know all about it. There were bullets through the head, the stomach, all over but the head, mostly. And all those dead eyes watching you, following you all around the room. I wouldn't work in a meat store.
When Darryl left, he went back the same day and stole the cashbox. He'd seen it standing on a shelf. Those white blokes never learn. But the police came straight to our place and caught him. They always come to Nyoongah houses first. Darryl went to Riverbank that time, but as soon as he got out, he and Louis went breaking into houses. Darryl's got a joke for everything; he doesn't care at all.
Our house is like our world. Sometimes it's dirty and sometimes it's clean. None of us have our own bed. We share everything when we got it. Out the back Mum's got a bit of a lawn growing, and she waters it every day. There are always bottles and flagons by the bin because Auntie' Nira drinks like a horse. So does Dad and Uncle William too, a bit. Down by what was the back fence, there are two car bodies. Darryl has smashed all the windows now, just for something to do. They look a· bit like what we're all going to be, I reckon.. Perhaps that's why we surround ourselves with old rubbish. We are all going to be old rubbish when we die, or before. In the house everything's broken or dirty, no matter how hard Mum tries to keep things clean. I feel sorry for her because I know how she feels. But you can't keep a house clean with sixteen or more people living in it and only Mum doing all the work.
So at our house we sit around: playing cards or drinking or fighting or laughing. Sometimes a couple of us go and visit our cousins. We've got cousins everywhere; we'd be no one without cousins. Always there are some of us in jail, or Riverbank or Bandyup or some place. The Whittys get around all right, yet we never really get anywhere: we never move. There'll always be a Whitty family like us.
The one sound I hate most of all is the knock on the front door when the police come. I grew up with that sound. The police are always coming to question or arrest someone. When they came for Jimmy there were five, all with guns. Sweat was running off Jimmy and he was crying for Dad. He was shaking like he was a hundred and ten, instead of only just eighteen. We all laugh about that now: the night the munadj took Jimmy away; because, real1y, laugh is all we can do about it.
Well, now we've got some money and there's a programme about Charlie Pride on the radio. Everyone is happy and there's a good movie on TV.
Tomorrow there'll be fish and chips for tea.
That'll do me.