Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
I was unsure about whether to wear the green dress of the blue. In green I always feel quite frogish and not unlike the silly toy my sister gave me for my 9th birthday. It was meant to be a prank gift, a bit of a throw away and a reminder of the story that Grandad would tell us every school holiday when we went to stay with him on the farm.
I don’t know why he told the story of the green frog, we never saw any of them on the Mallee farm. The colours of the farm were full of browns and rusts, the red sand and golden wheat. Black and white cows, ducks and drakes. There was the purple flash of the bougainvillea that grew over the arch at the farm house gate, but not a lot of green.
Grandad was a man of few words, but when he did speak we would hang on to his every word, so when the story of the green frog came out we were mesmerised, fixed. Next minute he was laughing, his strange little giggle, tears rolling down the side of his cheeks ‘city kids’ he would mutter under his breath, shaking his head, ‘city kids’.
My mother Merle was born in the Mallee and raised on this farm but lived in the farm house that I remember only a few years before moving to a country town. When Merle was younger she lived in what they called ‘the ranch’, nothing much more than a shed with few windows and a hard earth floor. It was after the war and she lived there with her father, her sister Roma, Uncle Gill, Uncle Ces, her cousin Joe and ‘Mother’. Mother was her Aunty but was the only mother she’d known after her own died some years earlier. ‘Mother’ kept the family and the house every Christmas and would paint the walls of the kitchen the most beautiful shade of green.
Merle and Joe loved to play together and as Roma was older, she often left them to their own devices. It was on one of these occasions that Merle and Joe stole the cowrie shell from old Tom the Indian tinker who camped on the plain when he was in the area selling his wares. The two children were fascinated by the shell taking turns in putting to their ears, smelling its scent and trying to imagine the creature who lived in its belly before it had been plucked from the sea. They kept the shell hidden in a wheat bag under their bed knowing they shouldn’t have stolen it but hoping to keep the treasure for their own. The possession of the coveted treasure wasn’t to last long as Mother soon knew there was something up, for she possessed the gift that many mothers have and knew before Joe and Merle did, that they were up to no good.
It was a strange procession of two large men followed by the trembling children that travelled across the plain to old Toms camp. Grandad and Uncle Ces in front with Merle and Joe trailing behind. The two men wondered out loud what the fate of thieving children would be, talk of police and retribution put terror into their hearts.
Struggling to keep the laughter out of his voice old Tom interrogated the two thieves asking them why they took the shell, ‘I don’t know’ muttered Joe, ‘I could smell the sea’ whispered Merle, only just holding back her tears. Old Tom smiled and thanked them for having the courage to apologise and bring the shell back to him. He wrapped the shell in a green silk cloth and placed it in box at the back of his wagon.
The knock at the door gave me a start. I was late again daydreaming of the farm, my mother, the past. I looked in the mirror and gave a silly giggle, put on my green dress and ran out the door.