by Eliza Quancy
‘Coming down the mountain. Can you help me? Auli’
Time to make a fire. Harder than last time because I ache and keep stopping to retch but nothing comes out. I need to eat something. I need to rest. I was going to eat pumpkin and kaukau but I find an avocado tree with ripe fruit beneath it, some rotten and half-eaten but some that are fine. Saul never liked avocados. He told me that our people don’t eat them, but he was wrong. Layla liked them and she taught me how to put salt and eat. We ate a lot of them, the two of us, mostly when Saul wasn’t there. He didn’t like us to do things that excluded him, but he wasn’t cross about the avocados. He was happy to see us eat. Saul used to be kind and loving.
Stop. I don’t want to think about him but my mind has a mind of its own. Ha ha. I need to shut some doors inside my head to keep myself safe and sane. I think about the avocados instead. I’ve brought salt with me just a little, not much, twisted into some paper and then dropped into a little freezer bag, so I sit down and cut open an avocado. Sprinkle salt and slowly eat. Try to empty my mind but can’t do it. Thoughts come like waves of the sea. The sea I have not yet seen. Only on television. Thoughts go their own way all over the place.
Before I ran away to find my birth mother, Saul and Layla had begun to argue. When I was small, there was never a cross word. Not to each other. Not to me. They worked and I played and sometimes I worked, too. Play working. Planting kaukau. Pulling weeds. Sweeping the floor. Sweeping the circle. But the circle was never play work. That was serious. The circle was always serious and the first time Saul beat me, it was for that.
I had run through the circle to go and gather firewood in the bush and I had forgotten to brush it afterwards.
‘You left a hole, Aulani,’ he shouted and I was going to argue but he took me round the back of the house to the shed and he beat me. Afterwards, I could not stand. ‘Go into the garden and work,’ he said quietly, voice like ice, hard and cutting. ‘And never forget this.’
I walked bent to my kaukau patch. Couldn’t straighten. I crouched over the plants looking down and my tears dropped into the raised beds of earth where my plants grew. I looked over to where Layla was working and I saw her look at me but she didn’t come over, didn’t come to bring comfort. Instead, she got up and followed Saul into the house. The punishment worked. After that, I never forgot the circle even when I was excited about something or couldn’t wait to do something or get to somewhere.
Many times I asked about it, why the circle was important. It wasn’t even a real circle, just a broad ring of cleared dirt that encircled the whole property. Packed down hard and swept clean. Difficult to manage when it rained. (We used a rake when the earth was wet and a broom when it was dry). I was baffled by the beating. Had not intended to be naughty. Couldn’t see how what I’d done was bad in any way. I thought Saul was unfair and Layla, too, because she had supported him but I dare not disobey.
Eventually, I asked Layla, ‘Do all houses have a circle?’
‘No,’ she replied.
‘Then why do we?’
‘To keep us safe.’
‘If they don’t need one, why do we?’
It was the right question because it didn’t get an answer. I had found the thing to ask and now I know part of it. We are different, but I don’t know why. Or how.
I tried listening to Saul and Layla when they talked, but they didn’t say much and when they talked, it was mostly about the dinner or the garden or about the work that had to be done the next day. But it changed when they argued. Then they talked about other things. I spent months trying to hear what they were saying in their arguments, and gradually I understood some of it (or I thought I did).
Saul was becoming afraid of Layla. It took a long time before I could believe this, but I’m sure it was true. He accused her of having special powers. Of trying to control him. Of passing her powers to me. That was the worst part. That was what made him angriest. She was spoiling me, he said, she loved me too much and it would have to stop. I was not to become like her. I thought about that a lot. More than anything I wanted to be like Layla. And Saul loved her so why wouldn’t he want me to be like her? And what did the rest of it mean?
Once when I was in bed, they had been arguing for hours speaking with raised voices, very unusual. Saul was angry and he shouted twice, ‘You’re dangerous, Layla. You’re dangerous.’
I heard her sob and then something that I couldn’t hear, but then I heard her voice again, speaking quietly and her voice was clear, ‘I’ll have to go, Saul, won’t I?’
With difficulty, I stop the thoughts. It’s hard to get up because I’m weary but I need more firewood. What I’ve got will not last the night and it’s dangerous without a fire. There are snakes. Too high here for Papuan Blacks but there are plenty of others and some pythons. Layla said she saw someone die of snakebite. Two days and the man was gone. It would be less for a woman or a child. Every time I hear a rustle, I grow tense and I peer into the darkening undergrowth. Sometimes I see an eye. I think I see an eye and then it is gone again. Sometimes I see Saul’s face and his eyes looking straight at me. With kindness.
In the morning, I wake and check my phone. I’m in a little clearing and the trees are tall but the light shines through, glancing off the leaves and dancing around the place where I sit. The birds are singing and the sound echoes. I check my phone. Battery - seventy-five per cent. No messages. Where are you, Layla? And then I remember that Layla rang and rang me after I came back, but I was shackled so I couldn’t answer. Would Layla think that I didn’t want to speak to her anymore? I hope not, but how could she know what was happening? She might think that I’d found my birth mother. She wouldn’t understand why I didn’t reply.
I eat and drink and set off as soon as I can. I’ve got to keep going and my legs hurt worse than yesterday. I can hardly walk and my right foot with the shackle is heavy. Before long, I sort of drag it behind me. Can’t seem to lift it off the ground. My foot keeps getting tangled in roots, although the track is clear most of the time.
On the fourth day, I am nearly dead and can hardly move. Surely I must be down soon. I grit my teeth and try to forget the sickness in my stomach and the pain in my legs and feet. Have to keep moving somehow or I’ll die here. And the baby, too. Not sure I want the baby, but I don’t have a choice. Put inside my body without my agreement and now I can’t get it out. It’s not me or him. It’s both of us together, live or die.
It takes seven days. On the seventh morning, I eat the last of the kaukau and I drink water. Then I crawl and keep on crawling. Can’t stand now. There is still no message from Layla but every morning and every evening I have texted her. My hands are now as painful as my feet and then I see it. The road. The blessed road. It’s close but I’m not sure I can make it. I stop, exhausted. I’m going to ring the police. They’re the ones who can get this other shackle off my foot, but I hesitate.
I’ve thought this through before. Ringing the police is dangerous. I’ve just killed a man. They won’t know that, but they will ask questions. Where have I come from? How did I get like this? What has happened to me? I’ll have to tell them that Saul and Layla ran off and abandoned me. That they left the key for me on the table, but that I could only get one shackle off. Would the police go and look for them? I think it’s unlikely and I could give them the name of Saul’s place which is a long way away. If they looked there, they wouldn’t find him. Would they go up the mountain to Keroko to check? It seems unlikely. They would have to walk. There is no road for cars. No airstrip for planes. Would it be worth it? Seems unlikely. All the way down the mountain I’ve thought about this, but I thought that Layla would reply. I have hoped hoped hoped that Layla would reply. I have prayed, although I don’t have a religion. Layla taught me about religions in the life classes. I look again at the phone. I ring her again. The phone rings and rings ... and rings. No reply.
There is no choice. I dial the number for the police. I ring and ring. The sound goes on and on.
I give up but can’t move. One more time. The phone rings and rings. I know it’s the right number. Layla gave it to me long ago.
‘Hello. Can I help you?’
‘I’m near the road. I’m sick. Please come.’
‘Which road?’ somebody asks.
‘I’ve come down the mountain from Keroko. Nearly reached the road….’
8
High up on the wall, there is one small window with no louvres, only flywire. That’s what I see when I open my eyes. I’m lying on the floor on a dirty mat in what must be a police cell. I look at my ankles. The shackles have gone. The one that was still there on my right ankle has been removed, but I don’t remember it happening. Don’t remember anything. My stomach is convulsing. I look for somewhere to be sick. There’s a bowl on a wooden bench. It will have to do. I retch but nothing comes and I lie down again. I look around for my bilum, my phone, but they’re gone. I drag myself up and feel my legs. No shackles but still can’t walk. I hobble to the door.
‘Hello,’ I call. ‘Hello. Is there anybody there?’
Two eyes appear in the slit in the door and a voice speaks.
‘What do you want?’
‘I’m thirsty,’ I say, and then, ‘What am I doing in here?’
‘You rang us,’ the voice replies, ‘so we came to get you.’
‘Yes, but I rang for help. Not to be locked up. Why am I locked up?’
‘It’s just while we check you out,’ the voice says. ‘And you were unconscious. It’s for your own protection. You needed to recover. You couldn’t go anywhere.’ I have to admit that there is some truth in this.
‘Can I have my bilum and my phone?’ I ask. ‘Where are they?’
‘They’re safe,’ he replies. ‘Locked up. I can’t give them to you. You’ll get them when you leave.’
‘And when will that be?’ I ask beginning to feel anxious. How on earth am I going to get out of this place?
‘As soon as we’ve checked you out,’ he replies and his eyes smile through the slit in the door.
‘And how will you do that?’
‘Ask you some questions about yourself and check that everything is in order. Then you’ll be able to go.’
‘Can’t you do it now?’ I ask.
‘No, of course not. I’m not the one who will do it. Inspector Boa will talk to you tomorrow. It’s Sunday today,’
‘Oh,’ I say. I had no idea what day it was. ‘Will you fetch me some water?’ I ask and hear what sounds like OK.
In a few minutes, I hear footsteps, something being put on the floor and then the sound of the bolt sliding across. The door opens and a young policeman stands and looks at me. More a boy than a man. Not much older than me probably, but tall. He picks up the tray and carries it into my cell.
‘Here you are,’ he says, putting it on the bench. I look at the tray and see a white enamel bowl with a chipped blue rim, a white plastic fork and a bottle of water. ‘It’s good,’ he says pointing to the rice in the bowl. ‘It’s got fish in it.’
‘Thank you,’ I say and he watches as I sit on the mat and start to eat. He’s right. It tastes good. The rice is cold but it doesn’t matter. It’s cooked in coconut like they do on the coast and there are pieces of fish.
‘It’s the same food that we had,’ he goes on. ‘Inspector Boa’s wife brought it in, and I saved you some.’
‘Thank you,’ I say again. ‘It’s good,’ and I feel myself warming towards this young man. One of Layla’s life lessons flashes into my brain. Don’t trust anyone, she told me, especially the ones who seem to be kind. But I ignore it. How can I live if I’m suspicious of everyone?
‘What’s your name?’ I ask, but before he replies, I remember that I had once trusted Saul and look how that turned out.
‘Constable Goasa,’ he replies and then relaxes. ‘My name is Joel,’ he adds. ‘What’s yours?’
‘Aulani,’ I say.
‘Aulani what?’ he asks. ‘What’s your family name?’
‘Kevau,’ I reply. ‘I’m Aulani Kevau.’ It’s a name I remember from a news programme. I’ve never had a family name and I realise that I don’t know the family name of either Layla or Saul. Or whether they have the same name. I’ll have to think this through before the questioning.
‘That’s strange,’ he says. ‘Where are you from?’ I wonder what is strange about the name that I’ve chosen but don’t ask.
‘Up in the mountains,’ I reply. ‘A small place in the mountains in Central Province. Keroko.’ I should ask him where he is from but I am so busy trying to work out my own answers that I forget. These are the first questions, I realise. Sooner than I thought and I should have been prepared. I need time to think.
‘I need to go to the toilet,’ I tell him, ‘and I need to wash.’ He brings me a bucket and goes away. Tells me to call when I’ve finished and I feel embarrassed, but I have no choice. When I’ve finished, he takes away the bucket and brings me a bowl and a jug of water so I wash as best I can. I thank him and tell him that I need to rest. It’s not true and I like his company but I can’t risk any more questions until I’ve thought of some answers. I like Joel. He doesn’t seem like a policeman. He looks a little like Layla, not at all like Saul and that is a relief. I’m trying to lock Saul out of my mind, but he keeps reappearing. Looking kind and that’s the worst part.
All night long, I keep on waking and the tiny space is almost as bright as day with the moonlight shining in. I can’t sleep because I keep seeing Saul’s face. Over and over again in my mind, I lift the stone and drop it. Sometimes it hits, sometimes it misses. And I’m too hot all the time and sticky. It’s much hotter down here than up in the mountains. I keep on going over my answers to the questions I think they will ask and I’m nervous. My answers might not work. Even the name I chose seems to be wrong. Why did Joel find it strange? Too late to change it now. My stomach is heaving again and I reach for the bowl and retch. Hard to prepare myself for questioning with this thing inside me churning my stomach around. Saul has gone but he’s left the child behind. His child and my child. No separation. I shiver despite the heat and sleep at last.
In the morning, it’s the birdsong that wakes me, even in here. I’ve figured out the name problem. If we’ve all got the same name, ‘Kevau’ wouldn’t work because it isn’t a North Solomons’ name. But how would Joel know that Saul came from the North Solomons? It must be something else. I remember a North Solomons name I saw in The Post Courier. It was Kroening. I’m sure it was Kroening. Saul can be Saul Kroening and they’ll just have to accept that Layla and myself are Kevau. Maybe that is still wrong, but I can’t change it now. Before I have time to do any more thinking, Joel arrives and brings me the bucket and the jug. I can have these first and then he’ll bring me breakfast he says. The breakfast is a piece of sago which I don’t much like because I’m not used to it, but it settles my stomach and the hot sweet tea tastes good. I’ve hardly finished eating when Joel comes back and says that Inspector Boa is waiting for me and that he will take me to see him.
Joel notices that I shuffle and hobble after him as he walks down the corridor. He knocks on a light green door.
‘Come in,’ I hear from inside. Quite a high voice for a man but when I go in, I see that Inspector Boa is not small as I expected but a big man. He doesn’t smile.
‘Sit down,’ he orders.
I sit.
‘We have a few questions for you so that we can check your story before we let you go.’
What I want to do is ask why he needs to check my story, but I understand that I have to be submissive. God knows I’ve had plenty of practice and once again Saul’s face appears before me, but I push it away. I nod and look down. Once again, Layla taught me how to behave like this in life lessons. She said that we lived differently from everyone else in our country, but that I had to learn how to behave like other girls. This submissive thing was one of the lessons.
‘What is your name?’
‘Aulani Kevau,’
I almost whisper.
‘Speak up, girl,’ he commands.
‘Aulani Kevau,’ I say again a bit louder. I notice that his shirt has a faint dirty mark just underneath the collar as though someone has rubbed at it with a wet cloth but the mark wouldn’t come off. Can’t take my eyes off it.
‘And where do you live?’
‘Keroko,’ I answer. No help for it. I said it on the phone, I think.
‘And why were you shackled?’
‘I was being punished,’ I say, and hesitate but I see that Inspector Boa is waiting for me to explain. He wants more. Joel is sitting in the corner taking notes and he looks up at me. His eyes are kind. Don’t trust anyone, Layla told me. Don’t trust anyone. It doesn’t matter, I think. I’ve got to say something. ‘For running away,’ I murmur and notice that Inspector Boa smiles at last but not at me. He smiles over at Joel as though saying something like There, I told you so. I can see he’s decided I’m a bad girl. This is not going well.
‘And what happened to you after that?’ the Inspector asks.
‘My guardians ran away and left me,’ I say and don’t speak further. I am sure that the less I say the better.
‘Who were your guardians?’
‘Saul Kroening.’
‘Yes, and who was your mother?’
‘Not my mother,’ I say. ‘But like my mother.’
‘Yes,’ Inspector Boa says getting impatient. His fingers are tapping on the desk in front of him and he keeps glancing over at Joel. ‘What is her name?’
‘Layla,’ I reply.
‘Layla what?’ The Inspector’s voice is beginning to sound angry.
‘Layla Kevau,’ I say, hoping this will be all right and I see the Inspector look over once more to where Joel is sitting, but Joel has his head down, writing away as though his life depended on it.
‘And where do you think they went?’ the Inspector asks.
‘I’m not sure,’ I say, ‘but I think they were going to Saul’s place,’ and add hopefully, ‘Buka, North Solomons.’