Blackbird - by Magdalena Lane
ISLAND | ISSUE 161In a collaboration between Island and the ‘Ten Days on the Island’ festival called ‘If These Halls Could Talk’, ten selected Tasmanian writers were paired with ten halls or notable buildings around the state, responding to place through creative literary works. This piece is one of the ten, which are all published in full on this site.
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The Sorell Memorial Hall is home to the Sorell branch of the Country Women’s Association. This story is inspired by women’s stories and celebrates the role of the community hall as a vital and democratic site that supports the continued sharing of traditional knowledge. Womens’ home-craft becomes a way of paying attention to community and practising acts of kindness in ways that strengthen and promote resilience.
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We sit together as her hands throw winged shadows on the sun-drenched verandah. Coarse wool catches on her paper-thin skin but her fingers are quick to smooth out the fibres. These gnarled hands are home to a strange kind of magic. They know exactly which thread to pull to coax a fine baby’s blanket from a tight ball of yarn. Above us, bees drone lazily in the dense canopy of eglantine. As she knits, she is slowly conjured away by the warmth of earl grey tea and the soft glow of sunbeams that strike her chair at precisely this time each afternoon. Even while at rest, she performs her acts of kindness.
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During the COVID-19 travel restrictions, it is Merle’s garden I miss most. The place where orange nasturtiums curl through pink azaleas, gum trees strike their white branches against the sky and pine needles release sticky sap under the tread of bare feet in summer. I was five years old when I was delivered to her doorstep as a foster child. I spent seven years in Merle’s care and, together with her garden, I was the centre of her world. I remember the dense passionfruit vine that grew like a hedge between her landscaped garden and the rest of the large and arid property. Though the vine was there long before I ever was, somehow it felt like it grew there specifically to hold a small child in its tendrils for as long as possible. A border made by nature to indicate the simplicity of ‘in here’ and the complexity of ‘out there’. After a long day spent exploring the garden, I would hear Merle calling me in and rush breathless up the slope to meet her, twigs snapping and flying from my hair.
‘Welcome back, your majesty, the garden queen!’ she would say, placing a chain of clover flowers upon my sweaty head.
At ten years of age, I discovered Merle’s name meant ‘blackbird’, a known carrier of knowledge, intelligence and wit. One who is caring and intuitive and who has the power to move between the human and non-human worlds. She was this dynamic conduit, always in motion and shifting seamlessly between the natural and human spheres. Merle loved her garden as she would her own children, had she had any. Herbal medicines were her speciality and she had a vast and intimate knowledge of the benefits they held for human health and how they liked to be plucked or pruned. In return for her care, they rewarded her with oils, flowers and roots so potent they could soothe any ailment or illness. Her understanding of plant medicines was well known throughout the community of Sorell. Every Sunday, many would come to buy her goods at the Country Women’s Association market stall. The volume of her tinctures, powders, salves and sales was so great that one year the proceeds were enough to fund a whole new wing of the memorial hall. The association Merle had been a member of for over 60 years would now have its own kitchen and meeting room.
Merle’s favourite phrase was ‘just get on with it’ and, though she was always occupied, she was never too busy to take my small hand in hers and walk me through the garden. Decades of manual labour had made her fingers stiff and she had difficulty curling them around mine. Instead she would offer her hand as a loose cradle where, like a baby bird in her mother’s nest, my small hand would come to rest. Merle wasn’t my mother, but she was ‘BB’, my blackbird. While we gathered calendula petals or elderflower heads, she taught my heart that kindness is an act of paying attention and that if I was to care for my fellow humans and non-humans, it would be important for me to know their rhythms, learn their needs and understand their wants. In doing so, I would be rewarded with an abundance of gifts in an endless cycle of reciprocity.
Merle was my entire world and one day during the school holidays I was invited to accompany her to a Sorell Country Women’s Association meeting at the local hall. Although she sold it to me as a casual gathering and lunch, what I found when we arrived was a tight-knit circle of women united by their dedication to community. Outside, the world was dry, sepia-toned and dusty, yet in that kitchen I witnessed a spinning wheel of colour. Skirts of blue, rose and yellow rolled past in prints of gingham, daisy and blooming borage. All afternoon, this circle of 20 worked in a kaleidoscope of generosity. The room was filled with the smell of crisp apples, fresh strawberries and locally farmed cream, and punctuated by soft laughter and hushed conversations about local families in need of an extra care package that week. Many had suffered hardships, delivered by another long and devastating drought.
While the women were united in their mission to support others, their individual gifts and contributions were as diverse as the many plant varieties in Merle’s garden. Carolyn, with her soft voice and green, jewel-bright eyes, was in charge of jams and preserves; Maureen, all angles and flushed skin, organised the hampers; and Rosa, with her dry sense of humour, created floral arrangements as vibrant and striking as still-life paintings. There was even room at the bench for a shy eight-year old girl like me, who was soon put to work, untangling and laying out Christmas decorations for the end-of-year supper and dance. Embracing diversity and sharing skills and knowledge was, in its way, a ceremony performed in remembrance of the qualities of community, where no two are alike, yet everyone belongs.
Behind the doors of our local hall, a web was being woven, strong enough to enwrap and protect us. Theirs was a world, or at least a kitchen, full of hearts like Merle’s. The day I met the women of the Sorell Country Women’s Association, I didn’t know just how much I would come to value this sense of belonging. Their gift to me was a love for something greater than myself, an idea I had only encountered while observing the cycles of nature in Merle’s garden. Beyond coconut ice and cordials, I learnt that it takes effort to keep a town thriving and in existence.
“Beyond coconut ice and cordials, I learnt that it takes effort to keep a town thriving and in existence.”
The Sorell Memorial Hall was the place where values were woven into and made visible through the home crafts of a dedicated group of women. I began to visit every weekend, leaning into and finding my stronghold in the notion of community.
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When COVID-19 began to flood every corner of the earth, it also seeped into every crevice of my life. Alone in Sydney, I watch the flickering television screen with an unblinking gaze, trying to make sense of the news reports, mentally marking those gone and those soon to be gone. After a long and messy affair, I left the small town of Sorell for the anonymity of a big city and, soon after, learnt that I was pregnant. Isolation has prevented my biannual visits to see Merle, who is now in a nursing home. I imagine Merle’s garden and how it must have grown over in the past five years since her departure. I wish it could still offer me safety and protection from ‘out there’. Instead, I lie at night, my hand on my belly, and gaze out the window at the millions of disjointed squares of light that make up the apartments of my neighbours. The plastic-loaded food halls are closed and the loud concrete subways echo with emptiness. We humans have been sent to our rooms. Between us, there is no joy, just the cold, dark walls that protect us from each other. Like my parents, I had not imagined life with a child, nor this as the ideal habitat to raise one.
Merle and I speak on the phone, initially once a week but soon the calls become almost daily. I wonder if she calls more frequently because she hears the detachment in my voice. For the first time, I have created a wall between us. The future is uncertain and I haven’t shared my recent news with her. Merle respects my silence and instead turns to the broader issue of the global pandemic. She wonders whether COVID-19 is Mother Nature’s way of telling us our demands have been too great. She seems to be collapsing under the pressure so many humans have placed on her. So little remains untouched. We have tamed almost every part of her. From now on, we should learn to take only what we need. Perhaps this is the lesson and the healing the world needs right now, if only we would pay attention.
Physically isolated and spread across a number of nursing homes, the Sorell Country Women’s Association has decided, Merle informs me, to come together one last time. Although membership has dwindled to 10 and with an average age of 70, the women have started a COVID hotline for the people of Sorell. Merle recounts a recent call from a local father of three whose wife contracted the virus and has been hospitalised, leaving him to look after three children including a four-week-old baby girl. Carolyn has already raised some funds and arranged for a housekeeper and nanny to help out. Maureen is going around tomorrow to mow the lawns. Rosa has been on school pick-up and drop-off duty for the two elder children. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and luckily for this man, the women of Sorell are ready and willing to help.
My days in lockdown continue, long and shapeless. I curse my decision to rent an apartment without a balcony and I long to feel the earth beneath my bare feet. Instead, reality becomes as harsh and empty as the footpath below. I haven’t made any connections in Sydney, instead prioritising a job that has come to a standstill. I know I should make plans before my physical state becomes visible; the tight Zoom and Skype frames can only hold my secret for so long. But my mind stagnates, leaving me trapped in some kind of bardo between the image I had for my life and the reality of what I have become. A woman alone, untethered from place and community. The knowledge of being completely on my own arrives like a punch to the lungs. I have buried the shame of abandonment deep in my cells and now there is a giant, lips pressed against the kitchen window, sucking it back to life. I curl up and hide under a blanket on the couch, wait for the sun to go down, for sleep to come and erase me.
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Beckoned at midnight, I follow the call and find myself, once again, amongst the women of Sorell. Standing in the shadows outside the hall, I hear the scraping of tables and chairs being cleared to make room for a dance. Red, blue and green festoon lights hang overhead. I step forward and the bulbs flicker and hiss, throwing a mottled mess across my white nightdress. The hall is ready but something is different tonight. My mouth and eyes are dry and I know that a dust storm is brewing and will soon blow in from the west. The old blue church bell chimes and Johnny Cash’s voice croons through the crackling speakers. It is time to go inside.
My eyes flicker open to see that, instead of dancing and dining, I am the centre of attention tonight. In the middle of the old ballroom, I lie on a makeshift bed, covered with white tablecloths that serve as sheets. Someone has embroidered the stiff edges with a repeating pattern of wings in flight, their outline thick in black thread. Purple plumes of smoking sage spill from porcelain bowls. Through the haze, Rosa’s face appears above mine as she places a wreath of flowering rosemary on my head. The water has been boiled and Carolyn places a pile of white washcloths at my side. I try to rise and reach out for her. Maureen takes my hand in hers and strokes damp strands of hair from my forehead.
It seems the women are prepared and willing to ease my burden.
The wind throws the kitchen door wide open, sending the curtain dancing; lace flowers scamper across the walls. Through the fine thread, the red and blue lights of an ambulance flash by. It moves slowly across the car park because there is no need to rush. The floral veil rises again, and this time it opens to let her through. Her spirit form swoops into the cavernous ballroom, shedding thick black feathers overhead. Her wings are heavy as she rises and turns large, loose circles. Starting wide, Merle moves in tighter and tighter, her call bringing the women folk into formation. They gather and circle around me, an impenetrable band of bodies. Rosa holds an umbilical cord, while Maureen carries a bowl of beetroot soup and bitter sorrel to clear the heart. They snip a lock of my hair to add to theirs, buried over the years in their flowerbeds. It seems I am not the only one with stories she would rather leave underground. With a loud banging at the door, a man known as Michael Brady has come to claim his lost treasure. He is a bushranger known by many and by me only too well. The women know his kind, always offering too little too late, and they cast him away. Maureen runs to bolt the door and growls through the keyhole, ‘You’ve done enough and you have no business here. This is women’s work now.’
The women chant the names of families near and far, a ceremony to remember those gone and to add the not-yet-born. Dunbabin, Fabian, Bellette, Woolley and Williams; somewhere in that lineage must be the names of my parents.
“The women chant the names of families near and far, a ceremony to remember those gone and to add the not-yet-born. Dunbabin, Fabian, Bellette, Woolley and Williams; somewhere in that lineage must be the names of my parents.”
Somewhere in the list they weave, and I accept, the presence of my unborn child. This supernatural dance, this lineage of women, the only family I have. I am back at the centre of my story. Above me, the roof of the hall opens as Merle climbs higher and higher, black against the moonlit sky. Leaning in, Rosa lifts my limp, puffy face to meet her gaze. ‘You are needed now more than ever, girl. There is so much more ahead of you. Get on with it.’ As Rosa lets go and my head falls back on the sweat-drenched pillow, the back door of the hall slams open. Fluorescent lights flicker on overhead and the women’s shadowy spell is broken. It is the Lord Mayor in his dressing gown. Surveying a scene for which he has no reference, he takes this moment to proclaim the women’s kitchen closed for good. Later I find out that the councillors have recommended that the space be put to better use, as public toilets. Women’s work is no longer welcome here.
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Merle taught me that living in hope of predictive narratives only brings disappointment. That there are no straight lines in nature, nor in the human world. Life with her was a constant reminder of the knowledge present in every experience – most of all, in moments of hardship and loss. COVID-19 began as something ‘out there’ but it has made its way ‘in here’, to my heart. I no longer think it a coincidence that the virus arrived in the same year as Merle’s death. Nature just picked up where she left off, to say that humans have lost the ability to attend to matters larger than themselves.
I was not able to travel, to be there to soothe and hold Merle’s body as she left the human world. Or to be a stronghold as her heart collapsed under its own weight. But I believe that Maureen, Carolyn and Rosa were there to ease her passage to the spirit world. I return to what I have always known and to what she taught me – that nature dances to her own beat and timing.
We cannot predict the stories, but we can be there for each other as they unfold.
“We cannot predict the stories, but we can be there for each other as they unfold.”
I can no longer do for Merle what she did for me and for so many. Instead, I take my knitting from the bottom of the wardrobe and begin to form my circular stitches again, my baby blackbird at my feet. ▼
This story appeared in Island 161 in 2021. Order a print issue here.
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