by Lloyd Jones
A shiver passed across the sea, and it began to rain. This was no ordinary rain. This was not the kind that blows in off the sea and forces you to shelter behind a tree. This rain dropped down like flung stones. In the pale morning light I watched it kick up mud on the trampled ground outside. It was as if the gods were seeking to erase the wickedness that had taken place.
Rain in the tropics is warm, and like other rains I was sure it would soon pass. I had some things I needed to do that wouldn’t wait. I needed to go up the hill and break the news of Mr. Watts’ death to Mrs. Watts. Mr. Watts would want her to know. Under the trees the weather wouldn’t be so bad. There was just this open ground to get across, and all that dancing mud.
I didn’t run as I might have on other occasions when it rained. I didn’t run because I didn’t care about getting wet. Let the rain come down. I did not care. I might not care about anything ever again. Then I saw where I was headed and changed direction at once to avoid the place where we’d buried the pigs.
Of course, the damage was done. Thinking about the pigs unblocked other thoughts, and once more I saw the limp body of Mr. Watts. I saw the flash of the machete. I saw the body of the rambo roll over the edge of the pig’s pit, casually kicked aside, of no further use to the redskins now that he had revealed the mystery man, Mr. Pip. I saw the redskin on top of my mum, his shiny arse, the roll of trousers around his ankles. I heard my mum grunt, a noise I still cannot get out of my head. I smelled tobacco; and in the mud splattering around me I thought I heard again the lip-sucking noise the officer made while he stood with me looking back at the beautiful world.
This is how I came to be walking without much thought to direction, without much care or idea of where I was headed—except I walked fast. I was trying to walk away from these thoughts. That’s what I was doing. If I’d had my wits about me I’d have realized I was walking towards the gorge.
That’s what I could hear through the trees, the heavy flow of a swollen river. I did not connect the two events: the rain and the river. The rain barely registered with me other than I am getting wet. But on thinking about it, this rain was wetter and more persistent than any I have ever known. It was rain that insists you take it more seriously; pay closer attention to it.
When I came to the river, I took no notice of the signs, the swift changes. One moment the river was fifty meters to my left. The next it was there at my elbow, a foaming brown tide of debris and trees with stricken branches surging for the open sea.
A river in flood is not the smooth, aluminum-coated phenomenon seen on television. It bulges, it spins. It is furious with itself. It gets caught up in whirlpools, then extracts itself; it releases itself from tight bends; it rushes banks, greedily clipping soil into its speeding waters. It catches everything in its path. It could even catch me.
It could catch me and I wouldn’t care. I wouldn’t care because everything dear to me had been taken away—my mum and Mr. Watts. My father was somewhere out there in a world I had no hope of reaching. I was alone. The river could catch me and I wouldn’t care.
I was flirting with this notion of being caught and taken when, in the same moment, a wall of water about knee-high raced towards me. I could have moved to higher ground if I’d hurried. But I didn’t. And it wasn’t because I had decided to die. It was because I had never seen anything like it.
Something solid thumped my knee, probably a heavy piece of wood. I didn’t see it. In spite of everything I have said about my numbness, the pain was sharp. Instinctively I raised my knee, clutching it, and in the next moment the flood picked me up as it had other bits of flotsam and fed me into the river.
There is a story that my father taught me to swim by throwing me off the wharf. That’s why my mum says I was born with water wings. Without them I would have sunk like a stone. So I was not afraid of water. What I felt was a pure astonishment. The speed of it. Only a few seconds earlier I had been standing on land. Now I felt myself scooped up and dropped into a stronger current. I was part of this rush to the sea. I began to feel curious.
It occurred to me I could simply end things this way. I could just give up, let go. This is what the flood wished me to do, and I was thinking how, so far, it was all so easy, when without warning the river changed character. Suddenly I was being dragged under.
At last I knew what to do. I had to survive.
This is something we all take for granted, but no matter how bad things get, the moment you are denied air you fight for it. You know at last what you need. You need air.
I couldn’t see anything for the silt in my eyes. The river was animal-like. It had limbs with claws. It had a hold of my legs. It pulled me down. I had to fight my way to the surface and fill my lungs with air. Then the same thing happened all over again. It grabbed my legs and pulled me down. It wouldn’t leave me alone. I was pushed under countless times and was thinking what a dumb way to go. How careless of me. How stupid.
I saw my father’s head wilt as he was given the news of my drowning. And as the last of the air drained from me it was the thought of my father’s pain that drove me back to the surface. An hour earlier I couldn’t have cared what happened to me. That had passed. Now I felt a responsibility to live.
At some point I bumped against something large and solid. In the blinding confusion I thought, Yes, thank you, God, I’ve been thrown against a bank. Land. I could feel its certainty, its beautiful certainty. I threw my hand out and found myself clinging to a monstrous log.
I do not know what kind of tree it had once been. It had no leaves or branches. The water had turned its bark smooth. So it was spongy to touch. It was just a log, but in this situation, in this rushing water, just-a-log was a great deal more than just-a-girl. For one thing, the log would survive. No matter how many times it was turned in a current or shot forward on a rapid, it would eventually wash up on a beach. And that would be its story as it dried out in the sun, sinking further into the sand with the passing of each day. It would survive. I thought it might be worth clinging on to.
For a time we shot along to where the river split in two. Log and me drifted into the left lane (I will call it), which was a stroke of luck because this stretch of water shifted us out of the strong, nagging mid-river current into the still brown water spreading from the coast.
What would you call a savior? The only one I knew went by the name of Mr. Jaggers. And so it was natural for me to name my savior, this log, after the man who had saved Pip’s life. Better to cling to the worldliness of Mr. Jaggers than the slimy skin of a water-soaked log. I couldn’t talk to a log. But I could talk to Mr. Jaggers.
The river emptied into a vast area of still, flat water. I thought we must have drifted near the old airfield long since overgrown. That was okay. I was no longer afraid. We were going to survive. The thought came and went, but without any of the gratitude I would have shown earlier when the river was doing its best to hold me under. No. We were going to survive, and now it only felt inevitable, and business as usual.
I was one of those heart seeds us kids had heard about in class. I was at some earlier stage of a journey that would deliver me to another place, to another life, into another way of being. I just didn’t know where or when.
In the near distance I could make out the schoolhouse. If only I could steer Mr. Jaggers in that direction, I might slip off and climb onto the roof.
The rain stopped. The gluey air was breaking up to high cloud. Above me I could hear the thudding of rotor blades. I closed my eyes and waited for the redskins to shoot. I was sure they would. They would see me and that would be that. A second later the helicopter thudded damply away behind the clouds.
It began to rain again. Slow, steady rain, and the schoolhouse disappeared behind a gray mist. I clung to Mr. Jaggers, now no longer sure where we were or of the direction we were moving in.
I started to worry that we would be brought back to the river and that the current would snatch us back into its path. Then we would be carried out
to sea, where I’d be too tired to fight. That’s what I was thinking when out of the gray mist arrived the sound of paddles and then the dark shape of a prow. One man was paddling—I knew him! Now I saw Gilbert and his mum, and someone else, an older woman. I waved my hand and called out.
Within minutes I was hauled aboard the boat, to the wonderful lightness of the world above water. I was hugged. My face patted and kissed. For the first time I was aware of the bone-ache in my arms.
I leaned over the side to look for my savior. Mr. Jaggers seemed to know with sad recognition that it was just a log and that the disloyal Matilda who had clung to its back throughout this watery trial was the privileged one, the lucky one.
For a few minutes after I was hauled aboard, the log drifted alongside—bobbing and sticking close. Every now and then one end of it lifted on a wave, and it seemed almost to inquire if there was room enough for it too. But no one else aboard looked at the log.
After each of them gave me a hug (even Gilbert), Mrs. Masoi smiled at me through teary eyes. She pressed her cheek against mine. Mr. Masoi didn’t say anything. He had other things on his mind. He whispered to us to stay quiet. Then he turned the boat around and we headed out to open sea.
I found out later they had been waiting for darkness. And Gilbert’s father had actually given word that they would start out for sea, when I was spotted clinging to Mr. Jaggers.
IN THE NIGHT I woke to men’s voices. Low, unhurried, gentle voices. A large shape with a blinding light loomed up alongside us in the darkness. That light was magical but much too bright. A pair of powerful hands reached under my arms. They may have belonged to Gilbert’s father or another man. I don’t know. But I do know this. The first pair of eyes to stare back at me came from a black face. I could tell from their expression that something was wrong. I have often wondered what that person saw, or thought he saw. I only remember that he wore shoes. Shoes.
I felt myself relax. I was safe. I’m sure I must have felt glad. After all, we had been saved, fished out of the sea. But I’m guessing, because whatever I felt at the time has since contracted to a few enduring details. The boat that belonged to Gilbert’s father, the same one I had seen Mr. Watts and Gilbert’s father haul up the beach, seemed so very small when I looked down on it from the deck of the bigger boat. I remember being given a cup of something sweet. It was hot chocolate. After the sight of those shoes, hot chocolate was my second experience of the outside world. And this was quickly followed by a soft mattress under me, and the low purr of an engine.
We put in at a place called Gizo. A dawn sun was already burning away the fog from the hills. We could see a roofline of houses in among the trees. I heard a dog bark. As we roped up at a pier a dozen little black kids came running and laughing towards us. Behind them marched several figures in uniform. Men in smart shirts. We spent the night in this town. We must have spoken among ourselves. We must have congratulated each other for our escape. I like to think we singled out Mr. Masoi for special praise. If we did these things I no longer remember them.
The next morning we set out for Honiara, the Solomons’ capital. We were greeted by several policemen and taken to the infirmary. There, a white doctor inspected me. He asked me to open my mouth wide and he shone a light down my throat. Then he looked my skin over. He looked in my ears. He parted my hair. I don’t know what he was looking for. He found a different light to shine into my eyes. I remember him saying, “Matilda, that’s a nice name,” and when I smiled he asked me what I was smiling at.
I shook my head. I would have to tell him about Mr. Watts and I wasn’t ready to yet. I didn’t want to mention Mr. Watts just because another white man had commented on my name.
The doctor took my temperature. He listened to my lungs and my heart. He was sure there was something the matter. He just couldn’t find out what. His room was filled with so many things. Paper. Pens. Files. Cabinets. There was a large color photograph of him playing golf. He stood crouched over his putter with the same pinched look of concentration he used to comb over my body.
I noticed a calendar on the wall. I asked if I might look at it. I discovered it was September. To illustrate the month there was a photograph of a white couple walking hand in hand along a sandy beach. The year was 1993. I worked out that I’d missed my fifteenth birthday.
The doctor sat back in his chair. He pushed away from his desk so that his white knees rose above it. He arched his hands under his chin. It was a kind face that studied me.
“Where is your father, Matilda?”
“Australia.”
“Australia is a large country. Where in Australia?”
“Townsville.”
Now he unfolded his legs and leaned forward to pick up a pen.
“And your father’s full name is?”
I told him, and watched him write it out. Joseph Francis Laimo.
“My mother is Dolores Mary Laimo,” I said.
Then he sat back as he had before and studied me over his arched hands and white knees.
“Why don’t you tell me about your mum, Matilda.”
I REMEMBERED MY FATHER’S DESCRIPTION as he looked out the airplane window and saw how tiny our home was. Now I knew what he meant when he said the plane rolled over on its side without falling out of the sky, and how the window filled up with view.
I saw the green of Honiara and its rooftops, and as we went higher it grew smaller and smaller until all I could see was blue. I was leaving for Townsville, to be with my father.
I knew all about departure. I knew from Pip about how to leave a place. I knew you don’t look back.
I didn’t get to see Gilbert and his family again. I don’t know what happened to them. Only good things, I hope.
We were so many hours up in the air. The cool cabin was another new experience, to feel goose bumps. I am sure I dozed off, because when I next looked out the window there was Australia, flat, pegged out, and gray like a skin. It wasn’t so far away after all. I kept waiting for the plane to land, but it took many hours before it dropped in the air. The knot in my stomach had nothing to do with the descent, though. I was hoping that my father would like me. I was hoping that I would live up to his memory of me.
I had on new shoes, a new skirt, and a new white blouse. In a paper bag I carried my old skirt and old blouse, practically rags, and a toothbrush.
A black man is easily spotted in Townsville, especially at the airport, and there he stood in the door of the terminal, waving both arms, his face one big shining smile. From the tarmac there was time to note some changes in him, and I felt my mum’s critical side in me.
His transformation into a white man was near complete. He wore shorts, and boots that rose no higher than his ankles. A white shirt did little to hide his bulging stomach. My father and beer liked each other. That’s what my mum used to say.
A man with flags had directed the plane to its park on the tarmac. Now it was my father’s turn to stand as the flagman had, his arms held open to me. I didn’t know what to do with my face. I wanted to smile, but instead my eyes grew hot, and before I knew it there were tears. These were happy tears.
My father wore a silver chain around his neck. After a hug he took it off and slipped the chain over my head. I think he just felt the need to give me something, and that chain was handy. I still wear it today.
“Look at you,” he said. “Look at you.” He turned around to the airport crowd with his beaming face and white teeth, as if to invite others to admire me. He asked if I had any luggage.
“Just me and this,” I said, holding up the paper bag. He picked me up under the arms and spun me around. I didn’t know if he had been told about my mum. For all I knew he had been expecting her to get off that plane with me. He didn’t say, and gave little away.
My father placed a hand on my shoulder to direct me inside the terminal out of the hot Townsville sun. That’s when I saw him turn his head and glance across the empty gray tarmac to the plane. And when he saw me notice t
hat, he smiled through his glassy eyes and changed the subject. “We’ve got some eating to catch up on,” he said. “I’ve bought you a birthday cake for each of your birthdays I missed.”
“That’s four cakes,” I said.
He chuckled, and we walked into the terminal and its cool air, my father’s hand on my shoulder.
I WENT TO the local high school. I had several years to make up, and at first I sat in a class among white kids younger than me.
On my second day I went along to the school library to see if it had Great Expectations. I found a copy sitting on a shelf—not hidden or in a “safe place,” but there for anyone to come along and pick it up. It was a hardback. It looked indestructible. I carried it to one of the tables and sat down to read.
It was more wordy than I remembered. Much more wordy, and more difficult. But for the names I recognized on the pages I might have been reading a different book. Then an unpleasant truth dawned on me. Mr. Watts had read a different version to us kids. A simpler version. He’d stuck to the bare bones of Great Expectations, and he’d straightened out sentences, ad-libbed in fact, to help us arrive at a more definite place in our heads. Mr. Watts had rewritten Mr. Dickens’ masterwork.
I puzzled my way through this new version of Great Expectations, underlining each word of every sentence with the stub of my finger. I read very slowly. And when I got to the end I read it once again to make sure I understood what Mr. Watts had done, and that any disappointment wasn’t my own error.
The attempts of us kids to retrieve fragments were little more than efforts to rebuild a castle with straw. We had failed to remember correctly; of course our failure was guaranteed because Mr. Watts hadn’t given us the full story the first time around. I was surprised to discover the character of Orlick. In Mr. Dickens’ version, Orlick is competing with Pip for Joe Gargery’s favors. Ultimately Orlick will attack Pip’s sister and leave her an insensible mess, a speechless invalid. He even tries to kill Pip! Why hadn’t Mr. Watts told us this?