by Naomi Booth
‘Good to meet you, Mara,’ Pete says. ‘And who’s this little fella?’ Pete swoops in real close, trying to take the child’s hand. The baby just stares at Pete, eyes brimming with fury. His tiny hand clenches harder and then he flails out at Pete’s face. He strikes Pete on the mouth and immediately starts to wail.
‘Oh, lord, I’m sorry,’ says Mara. ‘He’s called Iluka, Luke for short.’ The child has buried his face in Mara’s neck now and his back is palpitating.
Paulie is cough-laughing. ‘Killer right hook my little man’s got there.’
‘What can I say,’ Pete says. ‘I’ve got a knack with the little ones. Bodes well, right? Sit down, won’t you? Have a seat on the sofa, Mara, I’ll fix us some drinks.’
Mara settles into the corner of our couch with the child, and I take the seat next to her while Pete clatters around in the kitchen behind us.
‘You must be Alice,’ she says, though she’s only half-looking at me. She’s preoccupied with the wriggling child in her arms. She brings her lips down to his face and murmurs, trying to soothe him.
‘That’s right,’ I say. Paulie is leaning back in one of our camp chairs. Looks like he’s ready to test it to breaking point. ‘Sorry about the seating,’ I say, ‘We’re still getting set up.’
Paulie shrugs his shoulders in an I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-your-domestic-arrangements kind of a way, but he stops bracing back in the chair. ‘Looks alright to me,’ he says. ‘If you need stuff, let us know. There used to be a Salvo Army in town. Closed down now. I’ve got mates who do removals over in the next territory, always got stuff they want to unload.’
‘Ta,’ I say. ‘Pete has grand plans to build bookshelves. We’ll see if that ever happens.’
‘Righto,’ Paulie says.
‘So, you must be pretty far along?’ Mara says. The baby’s disappeared under her top; I guess he’s feeding now.
‘Thirty-six weeks,’ I say. I shift slightly, trying to get comfy. I watch Iluka’s little feet twitching with pleasure, his grubby baby socks and the soft, buttery skin of his chubby calves above them. Impossible to think that my bump, this thing inside me, is going to be as real and alive as the wriggling thing in Mara’s arms.
‘This your first?’ Mara asks.
‘Yep.’
‘Oh, I remember that feeling,’ she says. I’m expecting her to elaborate. She doesn’t.
Pete’s cursing in the kitchen. ‘Everyone alright with warm beer?’ he shouts through. ‘Fridge is on the bleedin’ blink.’
‘It’ll do,’ Paulie says.
‘Yeah, I’m not fussed,’ Mara says.
‘I’ll have that lemonade, babe,’ I call through.
Pete fusses about for a bit, bringing through the drinks and little bowls of snacks. Eventually he clinks with everyone and then eases himself into a camp chair.
‘So, how old’s Iluka?’ he asks.
‘Nearly ten months,’ Mara says, but she’s only half with us. The baby has fallen asleep on her breast and we all watch as she draws him into the nook of her arm, rocking him gently. There’s watery milk swimming around his lips. Mara moves her lips across the top of his head, whispering against his soft skull. I’ve always found it kind of obscene, this intimacy between mothers and their babies: she’s lost in the baby and her lips rustle against his skin. Is she blissed out, I wonder, or is she speaking a secret spell of protection? Keep him safe, Almighty Lord, God of our Dreaming, help me keep my baby safe from harm. The thing is, it doesn’t matter how hard you pray, or what you whisper. I’ve read about the contamination of breast milk: they’ve found paint stripper and DDT and flame retardant in there. She could be poisoning him right now. We’re all bringing our babies into harm, one way or another.
‘Well, he’s growing up strong, from what I can tell,’ Pete says.
‘That boy’s going to be strong as an ox,’ Paulie says, swigging back his beer. ‘How you finding it up here?’ he says, looking across at me. ‘Quiet enough for you?’
‘Oh, it’s a beaut,’ Pete says. ‘Just what we were after, isn’t it, Alice? A break from all that smog and stress in the city. Great place to start a family.’
‘You reckon?’ Paulie says.
‘There used to be a big old camp up here,’ Mara says, looking up from the child, ‘just the other side of the street. You seen the clearing in the jarrah? Just there. It’s traditional land, you know. When I was young there were still a few folk left up here, some of them living in cars. I’d come up sometimes to visit,’ she says. ‘Some of my mother’s folks were here.’
‘Oh yeah?’ says Pete.
‘Yeah,’ says Paulie, brusque as you like, ‘and the whities kicked up a stink about unsanitary conditions and the whole place got cleared. And then all the rich white folks got poor when the mining stopped, and cleared-off anyways. Now even the last ones are getting spooked like little girls and running out of town.’
‘What do you mean, spooked?’ I say.
Paulie looks at me, holds my eye for a moment before he decides to ignore me, turning instead to Pete. ‘You met the old codger down the road?’ he says. ‘Mr Prendergast?’
‘You mean in the broken-down house?’ Pete says. ‘Yeah, funny you should say that. We went across the other day, didn’t we, babe? We don’t have a phone line yet, so Ali thought it would be good to go down there, see if they’re fixed up. Anyway, the old bugger wouldn’t come out from behind his door. Shouting at us to clear-off his land. Making out as though he had a gun!’ Pete’s telling this story like it’s a joke, building to a kind of ludicrous finale. Paulie looks nonplussed.
‘Yeah,’ Paulie says. ‘I wouldn’t get any closer. He’s a nasty piece of work. Kids left years ago and don’t come back to visit. People keep hoping he’s died up there. Or that they’ve finally shifted him out to the camps.’
I’m about to ask about whether there’s a Mrs Prendergast, but now I need to know what he means about the camps. ‘What do you mean, shifted him out?’ I say. ‘You mean to the Internally Displaced Camps? Why would he go to the camps?’
‘Oh they’re always trying to get us to leave,’ Mara says. ‘Coming round with their clipboards, telling us it’s best to go before there’s an emergency.’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask. ‘What kind of emergency?’
Paulie snorts. ‘Look at her, getting all riled up,’ he says. ‘Thought you were meant to be a high-flyer, working for the State an’ all,’ he says. ‘Thought you’d know all about it.’
Even Pete looks a bit perturbed now. ‘A’right, mate,’ he says. ‘Fill us in then.’
‘It’s nothing,’ Mara says, looking up from the baby. She’s still got a beatific look in her eyes; she’s going to pacify us just like she has Iluka. ‘They just don’t want to pay for services round here. They’ve shut down everything they can. They want us all to shift into the camp over in the next territory, so that they don’t have to worry about fire protection and proper healthcare. They even offer us money to go, a resettlement payment. Bribery.’
‘No bugger ever comes back from those camps,’ Paulie says. ‘They’re trying to get all of us in public-housing to shift out there, and then there’s no tenancy to come back to. Clarence, fella down our street, went out a few months ago, then changed his mind, wanted to come home. They told him he’d have to pay back his compensation money and that there was no housing left for him out here. They’ve boarded up his house and it’s full of pigeons and meth-heads now, poor bugger.’
‘Shit,’ says Pete. ‘I went into town earlier to try to report on the old bloke, what d’you call him, Prendergast? That’s when I bumped into you, mate, and– ’
‘That right?’ Paulie says, ‘You were trying to report on him in the pub, were you, mate?’ He laughs, then knocks back his beer, giving me side-eye.
Pete’s very busy not looking at me. ‘Yeah, well, before that, mate. I was thinking maybe Social Services, someone might want to know about him. Anyway, couldn’t find a single servi
ce to report him to. Nearest Social Services office is in the next district, a copper told me, and the medical centre was… well, I didn’t get to speak to anyone there either.’
Paulie looks at me straight on now. He puts his beer down and takes a deep sniff. ‘So you didn’t know anything about this, eh, darl? Services being shut down? All the ockers and Abos being shifted out? Housing Department in the city not behind all this?’
I shake my head. ‘Well, I know about ID Camps,’ I say. ‘And the local council has eviction powers and compensation schemes. And, obviously, they can remove vulnerable people, when they’re at risk of being affected by a heat event. No territory is meant to be using them before there’s a credible threat.’
‘Right,’ Mara says. ‘And there isn’t any sort of credible threat here. They just want us gone so they don’t have to pay anyone to protect us. So they keep warning us about heat events, and outbreaks that are never going to happen.’
‘Outbreaks?’ I say. ‘What kind of outbreaks?’
‘Oh, all sorts of things,’ she says, real blasé. ‘Asthma, from the fires, which are actually hundreds of miles away. Rabies, they said that was the new threat just a few months back. Now they’re saying that skin business. They tell us they don’t have the resources for anything except emergencies now, and we should take compensation and move to the camps. That we’ll be much safer there, with proper medical facilities.’
‘Yeah,’ Paulie laughs darkly. ‘Folk in camps have always been safe, right?’
‘So that’s why they wouldn’t register you at the doctors’, babe,’ Pete says brightly. ‘They’re under-resourced. It’s nothing to do with cutis.’
‘But what about the fires?’ I say. ‘Maybe there is smoke in the air here? And what if there are outbreaks of cutis in this area?’ I look at Iluka, still asleep in Mara’s arms. I see the rise and fall of his little body. How effortful his breathing seems, the little gasp of the in-breath moving his whole torso. He’s still just learning to be alive; keep your baby close to you at the beginning, they told us in the classes, so that he can learn to regulate his breathing, so that he can keep his heart beating, patterning his tiny pulse against the thrum of yours. He’s still just learning to survive. How can she be so relaxed? ‘Aren’t you worried?’ I say, ‘Aren’t you worried for him?’
‘Honestly,’ Mara says, ‘we’ve lived here our whole lives and they’re always trying to shift us off the land. They’re always trying to scare us off with something. The fires never get across the mountains. Even if they look close, even if, technically, they sometimes get close, there’s all that rainforest and rock in the way. Lakoomba hasn’t ever burned, not in living memory. And, right enough, people get sick, but people get sick everywhere.’
‘The folk they send in, clutching their clipboards and telling us about risk factors, telling us we’re classed as vulnerable, they’re not from round here. They don’t understand how this land works,’ Paulie says. ‘They want us out. I’m telling you, those clipboard cunts who work for the camps, there’s something in it for them if they persuade us to go, some sort of sweetener. Now then,’ he says, ‘where’s this good, city shit you mentioned, Petey? We going to have a smoko on your porch?’
* * *
Paulie and Mara stayed for hours. The conversation moved on, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the camps and the fires and the outbreaks, and, as they talked about bars in the city and gigs and beer recipes, I kept trying to steer us back to the risks, until Pete told me to, ‘Change the bloody record, darl,’ and Paulie sniggered. When they finally left, Pete said we should hit the sack. ‘I know what you’re going to do, Ali,’ he said. ‘I know you’re going to want to pick through everything they said and decide what you’re going to get most freaked out about. I’m tired and liquored-up, babe. Let’s try to get some shut-eye.’
And now I can’t sleep. Again. I lie on my back in bed, listening to the house settling down into the not-quite-dark night. Pete is wet with sweat beside me and humming periodically. He turns suddenly, his legs kicking out as though he’s falling, and then he drops, heavy and still. I lift the sheet to try to let some air across my skin. It’s so hot that I feel like I’m tightening up. The skin on my stomach is running all over with burning, electrical sensations. I must not scratch. I must not scratch. I remember a woman at one of our antenatal classes who must have been as far gone as I am now. Impossibly large, she’d seemed at the time. She’d let go, she said, she just couldn’t hold back anymore, and we all thought she was talking about eating – she’d gained a fair amount of weight – but then she’d lifted her peach smock and all over her swollen, low stomach were deep, livid scratch marks. They’d grazed in some places, and you could see where the old blood was crusting over, and where she kept on opening herself back up. ‘I’ve had to cut my nails right down,’ she said, and lowered her shirt. ‘Calamine,’ the course leader said, ‘and self-discipline.’ The rest of us were still staring, open-mouthed.
I’ve got to get more air. I get up from the bed and go over to the window, trying to jam it up even further. It’s already open as far as it will go. I look out over the garden. Something outside is ticking away in the bushes. There’s a slight breeze through the jarrah, but the air’s warm and thick. Nothing’s going to bring relief from the heat.
I lie awake, or half-awake, for hours. I’m so hot I wonder if I’m starting with a fever. I listen to my heart beating, hard and unpredictable. I suppose Pete’s right: I’m the strange one, thinking about it all the time. Pete is the normal one, assimilating cutis to the list of everyday risks, just like Mara and Paulie and everyone else. For them, it’s just one other thing adding to a background hum of distant dangers, a fading anxiety-drone: melanoma, heat events, cutis. Wear sun-block, avoid danger spots, get treatment. But, back when it first started, I wasn’t the only one interested in the details: there were news reports, every day, and all of the big networks ran features. I’ve catalogued most of them, in my files. A small mountain town in Peru, the site of an American smelting company, had a well-documented outbreak. In the TV news report, a young man, wearing a bright orange tracksuit, sits on a rocky outcrop in front of an industrial tower. He grins straight at the camera, seeming to enjoy the attention. He gestures dramatically, makes his hands into fists and places them against his ears; then he hurls his hands outwards explosively, fingers splayed, miming an eruption from his head. The translator tells us that the man had gone to sleep one night, his ears perfectly normal. He woke up in the night to a terrible itching, like something was burrowing into the skin around his ears, and when he tried to scratch himself, he felt something there, something in his ears. And he knew immediately that it was the ‘Skin Worms’. The reporter tells us that this is the local term for cutis. In the boy’s village, more than ten people have been affected in the last two months. The boy proudly shows his ears to the camera: there are welts along the curved folds of his inner ear, cauterised wounds that are still glistening red in places, but they are scabbing over, forming a black crust at the edges. It still itches, the boy says cheerfully, but now he knows he will be able to hear. The doctors were kind and the smelting company gave his father money for new clothes and medicines, he says. He gives a double thumbs-up to the camera.
Another report focused on a large number of women living in a village along the Citarum river in Indonesia. The reporter wears a mask as she walks along the side of the Citarum and describes the geography of the area and the large proportion of women affected. The Citarum river is the most polluted body of water in the world, she tells us, that’s why she’s wearing the mask; but the children who occasionally run across her path have wide-open mouths, gaping delightedly as they dash in and out of shot. The river doesn’t appear to move at all as the reporter walks alongside it: it’s covered over with greyish debris, a barely-drifting scurf of different bits of plastic. In occasional patches, close to the side of the river, the debris clears inexplicably, revealing still ovals of black water
. The reporter is wearing a linen suit, and she moves her hands as she walks. Her voice is only slightly muffled by the mask. The Citarum is the longest river in West Java, she tells us, and 7 million people live in its basin. Large textile factories further downstream are major toxic waste contributors, and the river contains high levels of lead, mercury and arsenic. The rice paddies that used to surround the river have stopped producing food, poisoned beyond productivity. The land has been sold-off at rock-bottom prices to hydro-electricity firms. The report cuts to the inside of a village house. Several women sit in a circle. Some are elderly, their faces grave and tired. A young woman has a baby tied to her front with a bright blue piece of cloth. She cradles him, and her mouth is flat, dimpled at the edges in disappointment, or distaste, or surgical reconfiguration. The women begin to speak in turn, and their words are dubbed over with a young woman’s voice in English. ‘I didn’t know what was happening,’ one older woman is saying, in her own voice and then in the young translator’s voice. ‘I felt sick and tired. That is not so unusual. The river has always given me headaches. Then one night I went to bed and the skin around my nose became itchy. I rubbed at it, but I couldn’t get at the itch. And I could feel something growing there. When I woke my husband he shouted, and pushed me away. I went to a friend, and her son took me to see a doctor the next day and he treated me for cutis. I have no children,’ the woman says, looking miserably at the floor, ‘and my husband will not have me back in the house. There is no one to look after me except for my friend.’ The woman begins to weep and another comforts her. The woman’s nose has been reopened, but the surgery looks basic: the nostrils are bullish, outlined in red, crude circles newly produced by the cauterisation.