The Red Garter

“I quit!” I pushed the heavy pub doors open with my right shoulder and I turned to eyeball the boss and his dero mates. I flung my right arm out dramatically in Lady Gaga style. “Nobody touches me!” I bellowed, adding a hip wiggle to drive the point home. The bar erupted into boos and catcalls. Flipping my hair back I announced with pride, “I’m a singer! I’m not one of Madame Gardinaire’s girls.” I Stamped my foot in rage...my stiletto snapped! “Re...spect,” I whimpered as I lost my footing and fell, hurtling out of the pub down onto the street below.

The cold desert night air smacked my frustrated cheeks like Sister Julius, my singing teacher used. “Syara,” she’d say, “what’s wrong with you? One and two and three and four. Timing is everything. Your mum could’ve made it... she was good for a blackfella. But not you... you’re just like the others... nothing special.” Maybe she was right. Like jazz, my mum’s voice came from the deep dark waterhole of her heart. Her breath had an unearthly quiver to it as if her large rubbery black lips were holding back an unspeakable pain. Agents offered her the world but she didn’t want it. Now I’m alone I want it all. Fame ,money, but most of all... love.

I reached for a tissue from the little red bag slung against my hip and looked back at the pub. A warm yellow light flooded the pavement at my feet and as I listened to the distant voices of drunken men and brash women. The silhouette of my boss, who everyone calls Alley Cat, darkened the doorway for a moment and I heard him say mockingly, “She’ll be back. Just wait and see.” How dare he? I squeezed my eyes shut tight and made a wish, that I would find some way out of this hell hole. As my wish dissolved into an urge to go home, like magic, I noticed a drawstring bag laying on the pavement. This had to be “the answer.” I grabbed the book-shaped package in my left hand and threw my shoes as hard as I could at the stained glass set into the old pub door. Bloody old glass never breaks. I took off home, running hard and fast on rage and fired up to examine my find.

As my toes ran through the cool, dry red dirt, I pressed the kimono silk drawstring bag against my lips and breathed in its sweet heavy scent. I couldn’t help but plant a tender kiss on an embroidered flower and then held it safely between my breasts. Hay Street to Egan in 6 minutes flat - had to be a record.

It was dark on the veranda of my little bed-sit tin shed home. I fumbled around trying to find my key. “Come-on,” I yelled. A distant light went on and a dog barked. “Got ya,”I whispered leaving the key in the lock. I pulled the hefty door open and flicked on the light and jumped into bed fully dressed, not worrying about my dirty feet. They were freezing cold. I took a deep breath and pulled the drawn strings apart and carefully removed a well-worn book. It was so weird how my heart was thumping ... you’d think I was opening a love letter addressed to me.

The bag fell from my fingers because all my senses were focused on the black moleskine book. The smell of leather was hypnotic, and my hands shook as I unwound the long black hide ribbons, that seemed reluctant to betray the secrets within. Before I could pull back the front leather wrap, a photograph slipped out from between its pages. There, dressed to kill stood my dad, in front of The Red Garter, with a gorgeous looking woman on his arm. I was horrified. Not that he was with a red-headed bombshell, but that he was smiling like I’d never imagined he could.

I put the photo aside and sat stunned looking at the first page that bore the fancy hand painted letters. E&G in luminous gold and black ink. Underneath, Elaine Gardinaire and Gordon Forrest. Madame Gardinaire and my Dad! You’ve gotta be kidding.

Slipped into the front flap, was another photo of the same stunning ginger-haired, tall curvaceous woman, toasting the photographer with a lipstick-stained champagne glass. All lips, hips, and perky tits, she’d have turned any man’s head. The Singapore Swimming Club! My dad had the matching photo on our mantelpiece at home of him toasting her, the invisible photographer. Bitch!

On the next page, neatly pasted, Dad’s soppy love poem. I stared at his signature, remembering how much I loved watching him summon his mark-making up from the pit of his guts to his finger tips. Flicking through pages strewn with pressed flowers and mementos, like tickets to the premiere of Cats and photos of their world cruise eight years ago, and snapshots of them posing in front of heavy machinery at The Elaine Gold Mine. Then book opened itself at an image of my father sleeping. His long lovely back crossed the centrefold where a sheet was delicately sketched hiding his muscular buttocks. Being a voyeur to his love-life was uncomfortable.

On the next page was a devastating revelation. A letter from Dad to Elaine plotting my mum’s mental demise. In tiny print she responded agreeing to help him, and then in flowery words she expressed her willingness to marry him and raise me as her own. My father prided himself on being a collector of curious things... and my Mum was the most curious thing he owned. My favourite photo of Mum was of her singing in a jazz club in Japan. Strangely my mum would make you feel like you were the only person in the world, even though you knew that her world wasn’t yours. Trapped between worlds, some thought her mad and others profound. Dad had collected her in his travels, then cruelly ensnared her, forbidding her to performing in public or at home. Daily I heard him telling her, You’re not shaming me by crooning in clubs. You don’t need to go anywhere ... we’re your family now. You’ll only speak English in this house, get it! He choked the life out of her. Now I understand her loss.

But the most nasty thing he did to her, was to buy a well-known Wongai massacre site. She begged him not to buy or build, but according to his letters to Elaine it was all apart of his plot to break her. Mum was a prisoner to that terrible place. She withdrew, from the real world and me. Surrounded by the aboriginal spirits of those who’d been slaughtered, I’d hear her incredible voice wailing through octave jumps, that I didn’t think were possible. Dad had pushed her over the edge...

Then stuck on the corner of another page was a note from Dad dated ten years ago, asking Elaine to buy my birthday presents, because she knew what young women wanted more than him. I jumped out of bed and undid the single pearl necklace that I thought my father had bought me. I threw it in the toilet and flushed. As I went through the book I discovered that she was at my graduation concert, and had suggested to dad that I work at The Red Garter. Like a shark she’d been circling our family for at least fifteen years.

Then the bomb shell. Reaching into the rear flap I pulled out a delicate piece of old parchment, in Dad’s hand. He refers to the title deed to The Elaine Mine, that he had bought for her with only one condition. That upon his only daughter, Syara Forrest turning nineteen years of age on the 3rd of March 2021, that she, Elaine Gardinaire, would guarantee to give Syara Forrest the sum of $20,000.

My head was spinning. Five years ago on the 2nd of March, the day before my birthday, Dad demanded that Mum divorce him. He wanted her out of the house and would drive her back to her people in Perth. I saw mum getting into his car. She was hysterical. No one told me anything. An hour’s drive from Kalgoorlie, a kangaroo jumped in front of the car. Dad swerved, lost control and hit a tree. They both died at the scene. He’d made some shonky deal, so that when they divorced he wouldn’t have to pay Mum anything. Seven days after their death, I, the only daughter of a mining magnate found myself destitute. So I packed what I could carry in a small bag on my back, and with my mum’s guitar in hand, I walked into town and asked for a job at The Red Garter.

Now seething with rage. I got out my phone and turned it on. Ignoring messages and notifications, I found Elaine’s business card and typed - got your book. know about the $20,000 YOU OWE ME. my 19th birthday tomorrow, meet ya out the front of The Red Garter at 12”. Shit almost pressed send! It’s already 3am. I’m 19 and I’ve changed my mind... I pressed ‘delete’.

I collected up the photos, letters, business cards and the bits of flowers that had fallen out, I placed them back in roughly the right order, then tightly wrapped the black leather thong around and around, afraid that all that bad energy might leak out and get me. I was still wearing the stupid red garter that all us girls had to wear. Pulling it off and I sprung it over the book. Perfect. Beside my bed was the iconic photo of Mum performing in Japan, suddenly I realised that she was holding the same, kimono silk drawstring bag. Bastards! I felt so bad for Mum. Ever so gently I kissed her photo and put it in her bag. Then singing the song she used to sing to me, I placed the bag against my heart.

The moon spins around the earth,

The earth spins around the sun,

My love spins a silver thread around your heart.

From now on, I’m keeping Mum close.

I packed my backpack in time zero... I didn’t have much. With my pack on and mum’s guitar in hand, and the book and a box of redhead matches in the other, I strode outside.

The air was still fresh. Birds were waking and the sky was a soft purple with streaks of pink as the sun was still hiding beneath the dark-red horizon. I felt the urge to hum the traditional tune my mother sang to greet the dawn. I didn’t know her language but I could feel its rhythm stirring my soul. I put the guitar down and made a shallow depression in the red earth. The acrid smell of the match igniting excited me. I held it to the parchment...but it went out. Easing out from the edge the She Owes Me letter, I lit it and the parchment caught. Writhing like a captured snake the smell of burning leather was deliciously familiar and comforting. Then an old memory flashed to mind, I remembered going with mum back to her people when I was four. The smell of this old moleskine burning, reconnected me to the vision of my grandma and aunties doing a cook up. But most of all, it refreshed the memory of my mother’s smile.

Smiling, I picked up my guitar, and as I walked barefoot to the Greyhound bus station, the morning sun rose gently warming my back and lighting the way to my people in the west. I passed by the door of The Red Garter and sang out at the top of my voice, ”I’m a singer and you won’t be seeing me for dust!.”