I bought a painting this morning. It's bright and abstract and colourful and I'm not sure yet if I like it. My friend Lucy painted it. She called in at the school office looking for someone who wasn't here. Lucy was perhaps the first Indigenous woman I got to know at Utopia. She comes from a place called Aniltji and I was the school teacher there for a term when I first arrived out here. When I first met Lucy she was almost completely deaf. She wasn't born that way. She made the mistake of marrying a man who drank, alot, and became violent against those around him when he was drunk. Often Lucy copped the brunt of his rage in an effort to keep him away from their children. He had beaten her so many times around the head that she had practically lost hearing in both ears. I remember one time seeing Lucy in town, literally sitting in a gutter. I sat down with her and we talked a bit. She used to get very frustrated by how little she could understand in conversations. What I remember about that time was the palpable sadness I felt sitting next to her. Here was this proud strong woman who had literally been beaten into submission. The day I saw her she was in fact on her way to Adelaide to have an operation on her ears. I cannot believe the transformation it has made to her life. She still struggles to hear some things but can hold a normal conversation if you speak clearly to her. She is painting again (her main source of income) and she is back living on her country with her children around her. She is happy again. I remember seeing here a few months back and we talked about that time I saw her in town. She just shook her head and said 'I was really sad that time, but now I'm good, I feel strong'. It was this strong Lucy who visited this morning, talking excitedly about the sports weekend on at a neighbouring community and how she needed to sell a painting to get fuel for her car to get her family up there. So I bought one of them, because while other people will come to my house and see it as a piece of decoration for my wall, I will always look at it and think of my friend Lucy.
