Henry’s Daughter by Joy Dettman Page B

school, ever, in a million years, even.’
    â€˜Okay.’
    â€˜Well, spit.’ He spits and looks over his shoulder just to make sure Alice isn’t still watching him. ‘We’ve got Aboriginal blood in us,’ Lori says.
    â€˜Who?’
    â€˜Us. All of us . . . except Mavis, and nobody knew until about a year ago because Henry got adopted, but hisreal grandmother was a light complexion Aboriginal, and his grandfather was a Indian man called Woden – ’
    â€˜Didn’t he have a mother?’
    â€˜Of course he did. Whose stomach do you think he grew in, moron?’ Lori says.
    Growing in stomachs still has a way of turning Alan’s. His shoulders sort of hunch up, then he shakes his head. ‘You’re telling lies. Show me your tongue.’
    â€˜I am not. And I will not.His mother’s name was Lily.’ The papers didn’t say much about Lily, but Lori’s imagination fills in the gaps. ‘She was actually an Aboriginal princess and she had long black hair, and she used to wear jeans and long diamond and ruby earrings from the West Australia diamond and ruby mine, because our tribe owned it first. She died when Henry got stolen. Actually, she tried to stow away on the planethat took him to England and she suffocated in the luggage compartment – ’
    â€˜If you tell lies, your tongue turns blue and yours is blue. How could his mother be a princess if his grandfather was Indian and his grandmother was only part Aborigine?’
    â€˜You don’t have to be black to be an Aborigine.’
    â€˜I mean about being a princess.’
    â€˜Well.’ Lori scratches at the dust with her foot. ‘Well, I don’tknow, really, not about that, but she was. She probably got elected or something.’
    â€˜Was Henry’s father Aboriginal?’
    She squints at the sun, tries to remember what Mavis said when she got that brown envelope about the adoption last year – or maybe the year before. ‘I think the letter said he was a white boy. I think he was Henry someone – probably Prince Henry, and that’s how Lily came to bea princess.’ It sounds logical. ‘So, do you feel different now?’
    â€˜About what?’
    â€˜Like about Aboriginal culture and Captain Cook pinching Australia from you?’
    â€˜He discovered Australia, he didn’t pinch it. Anyway, that’s stupid. How could I feel Aboriginal culture now if I didn’t feel it before?’
    â€˜I do, and I hate Captain Cook like rat poison, and when I grow up I’m going to claim land rightsin that diamond mine in West Australia and be as rich as Eva.’
    Alan shrugs, walks off to the kitchen and comes back with Henry’s vegetable knife and four apples, which the kids collect by the bucketful, due to Bert Matthews’s two huge apple trees that lean over the vacant block fence and drop apples by the thousand unless the kids get to them first. Anyway, Alan sits down and starts cuttingone into slices which he offers to Lori. ‘That’s about how much of an Aborigine you are – if it’s true.’
    She eats the apple. ‘It’s true, and anyway, I hate fractions. Us Aborigines don’t think in fractions. If we want to be black we just say that we are – like Kelly Waters. She used to be white and then one day her grandfather said that his grandmother had black blood so now they’ve all goneblack – Martin says it’s so Kelly’s oldest sister can go to university for free.’
    He stares at her with his big blue eyes, sort of shrugs as he selects another apple. It’s seriously wormy, but good enough for what he wants it for. He cuts four quarters, calls one Henry’s grandmother and he sets her on the verandah, cuts a quarter in half and calls one bit Lily, places her down too. Another cut,Henry is a sixteenth, and one more makes Lori into a paper-thin slice. ‘You’d be