Holding His Hand, Tyson Goddard [best non fiction books to read .TXT] 📗

house.

“I never have the right John! Never! Just like I never had the chance to grow up! I married you at sixteen without a complaint. I was a housewife when I still should have been at school! And you betrayed me, you tell me I’m not enough for you! Well John you’ll have to find someone else to fulfill your greed and want because I won’t!’

John grabbed Tilly’s wrist and with a swift jerk pulled her ring from her finger and pushed her out the door where she tripped down the stairs and landed heavily on the pavement. It pained her to even look at the house, let alone go back inside. Yet she knew she would eventually have to go back to gather her belongings and then take that shameful walk out of the house officially announcing to the world that Matilda Anna Jane Wieland was once again Matilda Anna Jane Tatten, no longer wanted and no longer needed.

Closing her eyes, the image retreated to the back of her mind and she hastily went on scrubbing. Noticing how passionately Tilly was washing her brush Dolly put her hand on Tilly’s. Tilly stopped scrubbing.

‘You’re a mystery, Tilly Tatten. You arrive on our door alone and cold, looking for work and a place to live. The most helpless creature we ever did see.’

Tilly laughed but continued to look down at the dirty water.

‘Yet your cases are full of beautiful clothes and other finery I’ve never seen the likes of. Don’t worry Tilly, I know there’s a reason that you haven’t spoken about where you’ve come from, and whatever happened to you was terrible. I can see that. But life goes on, and eventually whatever you’re running from will catch up with you. Maybe tomorrow, maybe today.’

Tilly nodded in silent acknowledgement but she didn’t realize how correct Dolly was. As the two friends went on scrubbing and chatting happily, a stage coach was slowly drawing to a stop only a few yards away. The coachman jumped down and opened the side door. Gracefully, yet firmly, a tall figure in blue stepped out of the coach. Tilly heard the horses from the front verandah and sat back on her knees to peer over the little wall. She saw a lady in a ridiculously large feathered hat step out of the carriage in a flourish of blue velvet. Tilly was quite aware that this type of glamour was rarely found on the Tweed, let alone in Chinderah where they were cleaning. The woman slowly lifted her head and then Tilly saw her mother Sarah’s unmistakable face.

Tilly dropped flat to the ground, landing in the puddle of water.

‘Tilly? What are you doing? You looked like you’ve had a stroke!’

‘I have a question Dolly. Why would someone from out of town stop here? Especially someone who doesn’t belong here?’ Tilly whispered furiously.

‘Uumm look above you Tilly. It’s a hotel.’

Tilly looked up to the roof and saw with horror the big sign: “Chinderah Grand Hotel”.

‘Dolly, you neither know me nor saw me. Understand?’

Tilly gripped Dolly by the shoulders.

‘Al...alright, Tilly what’s going on?’

Tilly hastily crawled inside the house leaving Dolly bewildered amongst their buckets and cleaning water.

‘I…Ill meet you at home then? Oh that Tilly Ta…’

Dolly’s sentence trailed off as a beautiful blonde woman in a velvet blue dress walked slowly up the front steps, lifting her many skirts and petticoats as she ascended. Stopping on the front porch she looked down at Dolly, and Dolly looked back and knew, she didn’t need Tilly to explain anything. She just knew.

Tilly found herself wandering down the road towards Cudgen. She lazily kicked the stones at her feet as she trudged along the rocky path. As she drew nearer to a crossroads she saw someone on a white horse canter across the road up ahead. As she drew nearer she could not help to notice the unmistakable wide grin of Thomas Mai. She could not help to wonder where this man would take her on his horse next.
‘Hello Miss Tilly! Why you lookin’ so sad today? Cudgen isn’t that bad is it?’

‘No, don’t worry. You wouldn’t understand.’ Tilly was looking anywhere but at Thomas.

Thomas smiled boyishly. ‘Do you want me to show you somethin’ Miss Tilly?’

Tilly found Thomas offering her his hand from his horse again, and once again found she was unable to resist taking his hand. This time Thomas didn’t slowly canter down the road, he galloped as fast as Star would take him. Down the dusty road, veering off into a small bush trail then out into an expansive paddock with a single fig tree atop the nearest hill. Tilly held tightly to Thomas as Star came to a halt beneath the tree. First Tilly hopped of the horse landing amidst the waving knee length grass.

‘Where are we?’ laughed Tilly as Thomas slipped off the horse. She didn’t know why, but for some reason she felt immensely emancipated standing in that field with Thomas, and more like the woman she knew she was than when she’d been married to John. It made her feel happy, a feeling she hadn’t truly felt in a long time.

‘When the black-birders brought us here, we weren’t allowed to roam free of our confines for so long until they weren’t allowed to keep us as slaves anymore. By then we’d already gotten used to the fact we’d never go home.’

‘Wait. Black-birders? What’s that?’

‘That’s what the men called themselves who came and took us away from our home in Vanuatu.’

‘You were taken? Thomas, were you a slave?’

‘Yes, for a while. Now I’m a free man.’

He didn’t seem to say that with as much pride as Tilly thought he should have. Maybe he didn’t take pride in belonging to a country that was too lazy to do its own work. Now that she thought about it, neither was she.

‘When they forbid them to keep us as slaves most of us settled here and continued to work for pay on the cane farms that we were once slaves to. When that happened I used to wander all through these parts, and I found this place.’ He gestured to the endless green pastures. ‘It’s so big and makes me feel so small, the way you should feel in the Lord’s world, and in feeling small, amongst all this, I feel free.’

Tilly watched this young man who suddenly in her eyes was more refined and civilized than any man she’d ever known back home in Calvert.

With a fluid strong movement he hopped up into a branch of the tree and sat on the bow, offering down his hand to Tilly which she took a hold of and hitching up her skirt she herself climbed into the tree to join Thomas with relative ease. The sun was beginning to set and the couple sat in silence, yet their silence was not awkward as it seemed the world around them spoke in a million voices for them. The wind whistled through the grass making the long blades wave and rustle against each other, the cicadas chirped and twittered amongst the bushes and grass and in the air the birds were flying home to their nests making the small sonic beats with their wings that with the rest of chorus of sounds gathered around the pair in their fig tree.

‘Tell me Thomas,’ Tilly finally said, looking him straight in the eye, ‘what have you seen? What have your eyes witnessed? What do you have that makes you so happy?’

‘The Lord,’ was Thomas’s simple answer.

Tilly’s problems no longer seemed as big as his, nor did they seem as heavy. She kissed Thomas. And fell in love. In the fig tree.


Holding His Hand

The slap stung Tilly’s face. For three days Thomas had prayed with her for this moment. She somehow knew what her mothers’ reaction would be, so her prayers had been more for strength than a change in her mothers’ heart.

‘You’re getting married to him!?’ Sara’s rage filled the room. In her silence over the years Sara had been building up layer upon layer of rage that for so long had been held behind a stony cold expression and a quietness of grave like proportion. Yet now all her walls came tumbling down and her wrath was set upon Tilly.

From her mothers’ second story apartment Tilly could see Thomas standing on the sidewalk. He was simple and peaceful, despite his tragic past, and it was that simplicity Tilly loved about him.

“Lord give me strength…”

‘Yes mother I am marrying Thomas.’ No tears gathered in Tilly’s eyes, much to Sara’s surprise. Where was sheltered little Matilda so prone to migraines and sunburn?

‘You will NOT marry that coloured man Matilda, not when you have so much waiting for you back at home. I refuse to see you throw your life away for that kanaka.’

Tilly glanced at her mother suspiciously. ‘What do you mean, “back at home” mother? What have you done?’

‘Your father and I have spoken with John Wieland, and he’s decided to take you back. We’ve arranged the wedding to be the moment you get home and abandon these silly notions.’

‘Go back to John!? Mother! He’s a bigamist! How can you send me back to a life where I share my husband with another woman?’

‘ He’s wealthy and stable Matilda, and he has a lot more to offer than that…that…NIGGER!’

Tilly glared at her mother, she knew in that small moment that the divide was set.
Her mother would never come to love Thomas Mai as she had.

‘Mother, it’s LOVE. You’ve forgotten it. Yes mother, you’re bitter because of Ireland, but you are no closer to going back there then you were yesterday, and it will be the same ten years from now! Mother you yearn for something you can’t have and ever since you’ve been angry. I lost any chance of a real mother a long time ago. The REAL Sara stayed behind in Ireland, she didn’t want to know her daughter Tilly. I could never fill the gap that that land left in your heart. Admit it mother, you don’t care that Thomas is black, you just care that I’m in love.’


In her mind Sara spoke to Tilly in all honesty:

“It wasn’t Ireland I wept for Tilly, it was a man. Your father. He was the one left in Ireland, the man you see now so cold and distant. Once upon a time he was man, a real man. And then one night, one very special night I looked over at his chair where he always sat, and he wasn’t there. And I cried. Tilly if you fall in love your heart will be broken I know it. Marry someone you’ll never love Tilly, then your heart won’t break, although mine may be frozen to its core it’ll never break. Yours, my darling, I feel will shatter….”

But the words remained unsaid.

‘You’ll never understand mother.’

“But I do Tilly, I do.”

‘You once were able to love but it seems to have been