Where We Begin

by Christie Nieman

  ‘Don’t turn around,’ said Basil, and physically stopped me when my immediate instinct was to do so. ‘Just wait, Impatient Anna,’ he said. And he walked behind me with his hands on my shoulders, marching me forward and away from the silo. ‘Don’t you trust me? Haven’t I shown you good things today?’

  ‘Yes.’ And it was true. The shimmering leaves, the organic ocean. ‘You have.’

  ‘So trust me and just wait.’

  He marched me further into the far paddock, towards a tree trunk dropped on its side. The paddock had been cropped all around the fallen log, I could see by the furrows that eddied around it like ripples. ‘Okay,’ Basil said. ‘Close your eyes and turn around and sit.’ I closed my eyes and he sat me down and sat next to me. ‘And . . . open.’

  I opened my eyes.

  We were sitting some distance from the silo, which on this side had been transformed into a work of art. An enormous pair of birds, four times the size of a person, had been painstakingly sketched and shaded and painted onto the concrete side of the silo.

  ‘Holy shit,’ I said.

  ‘Pretty good, eh?’ said Basil.

  The birds seemed real. Long-legged and elegant, one stood erect with folded wings while the other, wings out, pranced before me.

  ‘Brolgas,’ said Basil.

  ‘It’s amazing. Who did it? Why is it here where no-one can see it? Wouldn’t it have been better in town?’

  ‘You can see it from the other road,’ Basil said defensively as he pointed away further across the paddock. ‘And besides, that’s not the point. The brolgas used to breed here, on the wetland. So it’s to remember them.’

  ‘Did those people do it – the people in the homestead?’

  ‘What? Fuck no. My mum’s family did it. This is our land. This is my mother’s country – my country.’

  ‘Were the owners mad?’

  ‘Don’t know. Don’t really care, to be honest. Anyway, it’s there for as long as it’s there – that’s all we can hope for. It was my dad’s idea. They all used to come swimming at the reservoir over there when they were teenagers, Mum and Dad, and your mum too, before it got drained. And then after the wetland got fucked up Dad remembered the silo was here and with Mum and my family they all made a plan to paint it.’

  We stared across at the silo as a group of cockatoos wheeled in and landed on the top.

  ‘You close to your dad? Is he still with your mum?’

  Basil reached out and took my hand. ‘So, they all told me not to do this, Anna, not to get involved, but I can’t do it.’ I looked up at his face. His eyes were green, I saw, not brown as I had assumed. They were lighter than I’d expected, the green only obvious this close up. He was wearing silver eyeliner today. It made his face really striking. The warmth coming off his hands was real and, looking at his eyes, which didn’t look away from mine, which were unafraid of mine, I realised that he cared for me, genuinely and deeply. ‘I have to –’

  Without thinking I leaned in and put my lips on his, pressing the warmth of them enough to get the taste of him.

  Basil leapt back. ‘Whoa,’ he said. ‘Shit, no.’

  ‘Fuck!’ I said. He tasted so different from Nassim. It was a shock. ‘Sorry. I actually really didn’t mean that. I have no idea why I just did that.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ said Basil. ‘We can’t be doing that. You can’t be doing that with me. That’s not what I meant at all.’

  ‘Me neither. Really, really truly. I don’t know what happened.’

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I think you’re great, and –’

  ‘No, be quiet. It’s fine – I’m all screwed up, like with everything, with my boyfriend, with all of me, my body has gone mad. My hormones are all screwed.’ I put my head in my hands. ‘I’m so messed up right now.’

  ‘Okay, okay. I get it.’ Basil seemed significantly rattled, genuinely lost for words. ‘It’s just the lady-time crazy. The maxipads. I get it. No biggy.’

  ‘Yes. I mean no. No. It’s not that sort of lady-time crazy.’

  I looked up at him hopelessly. He was looking at me, confused and blushing.

  ‘It’s the other lady-crazy,’ I said. And when he was still looking completely at a loss, I said, ‘I’m pregnant. It’s the pregnant crazy.’

  ‘You’re . . .?’

  ‘Pregnant.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Totally.’

  He looked shocked. And it was great. I felt not so alone. Telling him felt light, for a moment. And then it felt dangerous and I instantly wished I could un-tell him. Because immediately it felt so incredibly true.

  He was shaking his head with wonder. ‘Your boyfriend know?’

  ‘No. Nassim –’ I said, the words disappearing as my throat constricted. ‘Ex-boyfriend. Those texts –’ And I began to cry again.

  ‘Oh man,’ Basil said. ‘Man oh man, you are just crying a bunch today.’ And he hugged me this time. ‘I can totally absolutely see why you would need to pash a guy, just to take your mind off things.’

  I laughed through tears. He was so good at making me laugh.

  ‘So, but I don’t really get it,’ he went on. ‘Is that why . . .? I mean, couldn’t you have told him?’

  I sat up and shrugged and held my hands up. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ I leaned forward again with my head in my hands. ‘I just felt . . . trapped. Diverted. Like it would be better if everything all just went away and I dealt with it myself.’ I wiped my nose with the back of my wrist and looked up at him. ‘Do you think that was wrong?’

  Basil held his palms up. ‘I dunno. I don’t know anything about the guy. Like, maybe you were totally right. Maybe he was just a jerk who really couldn’t have handled it and would have made everything harder. I dunno.’

  I looked down at my hands again, frowning.

  ‘So I’m guessing your mum doesn’t know either.’

  I shook my head. ‘She doesn’t even know I’m here. We’re kind of . . . not speaking.’

  Basil put his arm around me again.

  ‘I wish I could be Nassim for you.’

  He got it. He understood. I needed Nassim. I couldn’t have him. I’d kissed Basil from a weird place – he got it.

  ‘I wish you could be him too.’ I looked up at Basil and smiled ruefully. ‘Well. Anyway. Grandma would have had a fit if she’d seen that. She warned me against you, you know. She didn’t want us hanging out.’

  ‘Really?’ Basil shifted, taking his arms from around me.

  ‘I don’t know why. Maybe you’re a bad boy. I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘A bad boy? Well, I guess it’s understandable that she thought you would fall in love with me. And look,’ he held his arms out, gesturing to himself, ‘she was right.’

  I punched him on the arm. ‘You’re such a jerk.’

  ‘Ah well, you can reassure her now, though. Tell her you tried it out and I rejected you.’

  I lifted my hand to punch him again and Basil caught my fist and put his arm around me.

  ‘So, my very good platonic friend Anna. What are you going to do?’

  I sighed heavily and leaned into him. ‘I’ve got the pills for it. I’m going to take them tonight. I had a bit of a false start last night, but I’m starting to get sick, so I really should –’

  ‘Hey,’ Basil said, sitting up suddenly so I fell away uncomfortably. ‘You still got that memorial pamphlet? I didn’t show you the funniest line.’

  I sat up and looked at him for a moment, a pissed-off feeling evaporating away as I realised what he was doing. I took a lighter breath, trying to welcome the distraction he was offering. As I fished around in my bag for the pamphlet I thought back to the doctor’s appointment. A little thrill ran through me and I said, ‘Basil, do you know anyone who might have hurt Bette? Like, in the past?’

  Basil sat back and looked at me and frowned. ‘No. Why?’

  I shook my head. ‘Something. Nothing.
I mean, you don’t think there’s any reason to be afraid of Hessel, do you?’

  ‘What? No way,’ but Basil could see I was serious about something, so he thought for a moment. ‘I mean, he’s nuts. Totally nuts. But old nuts. Funny old man nuts. Harmless nuts, surely? Why?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I thought. It’s just something the doctor asked. Bette had a bad knock on her head recently, some broken fingers. I think Geraldine was just fishing around for some possible reasons . . .’

  ‘Shit. Poor Bette. It must be living in that house. Total chaos. But broken fingers . . . yeah, that’s weird.’

  We sat looking at the ten-foot brolgas while I pulled out the pamphlet and handed it to Basil. He flipped it to the back. ‘Yeah, here it is. My favourite bit. Imagine it, right, this bunch of old white settler dudes all standing around putting up this monument to this place that they’ve “birthed” after driving all the local people off, chasing away all the inconvenient little black children. They say, “Remember that without memorials of this kind our young people will grow up feeling that we belong to nowhere.”’ Basil shook his head and laughed. ‘Now, doesn’t that just kill you?’

  I didn’t know if it did. I had glimpsed the name ‘Bromley’ a number of times in the list of ‘founding fathers’ on the back. Clearly it didn’t really ‘kill’ Basil either, because he tore the pamphlet in half and then in half again, and then again and again until it was in tiny little pieces which he sprinkled on the ground. And then he stood up and shoved his hands deep into his pockets.

  He sighed heavily, and then gestured with his head to the side. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go before we end up telling each other all the things we’re trying not to.’

  ‘I don’t know if I have anything left,’ I said. But I stood anyway, and we walked together in silence back to the road.

  27

  By the time we made it back to the road it was nearly dark.

  ‘So, right,’ said Basil, ‘the light’s going. It’s pretty late.’

  ‘You think?’ I said.

  ‘Here,’ said Basil. ‘Take the bike, ride straight up this road, don’t take the one we came in on, and keep going. It’ll take you straight up to the main road and Bromley will be right there. Shouldn’t take more than an hour.’

  ‘An hour!’

  ‘Definitely no more than an hour. It’d take four if you walked.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’ve got a mate who lives only a few kays down the road, I’ll walk down there and they’ll probably feed me and call my mum and dob on me – so, perfect. But I can’t let a pregnant lady walk that far. It’s a good bike. It’s got a light. Take it slow and gentle. It’s all flat.’

  ‘Fine. I don’t really have a choice. But what about you – will you be able to see?’

  ‘Nope, but I’ll cope. And it’s good to give the coppers something to do, Aboriginal kid walking around at night without a torch.’

  ‘You’re not serious?’

  He looked at me sideways. ‘You’ve lived a bit of a sheltered life, haven’t you?’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘I reckon. Look, get going. And be cool to yourself. I’m going to come and check up on you tomorrow.’

  I nearly cried. Someone was looking out for me.

  ‘Okay.’ I held out my hand, and Basil took it and performed a complicated shake with it.

  ‘Take care, my sister,’ he said, and strode off into the dusk.

  As I rode, the fields that had been green with sprouting canola turned turquoise and grey in the purpling dusk. Within moments I was puffing. Nassim had always teased me because I had never been fit, but this body fatigue was next level. Basil hadn’t been exactly honest: it had seemed flat but as I rode a slight and perpetual incline became apparent. Before long the moon rose and the sky darkened and all the colour drained from the landscape, and it felt as though my legs had been turned to jelly.

  I stopped and pulled out my phone. Eight minutes. I had been riding for eight minutes. I wasn’t going to make it.

  I looked up and down the road. No cars and nothing but canola on either side. I would have to make it. Come on, Anna, how hard can it be?

  I’d need distraction. If I spent my time thinking only about my jelly legs, I would be lost. I’d listen to something on my phone but I had no reception. I scrolled through to see what I had saved, and found a podcast on medical philosophy I had downloaded months ago and not listened to. It was the only thing I had. It would have to do. I plugged myself in, sat back up on the bike, took a deep breath in, pressed play, and began to pedal.

  The podcast started off boring, and I remembered why I hadn’t listened to it. I couldn’t see that it was going to be helpful then, for study, and now I couldn’t see that it was going to be helpful for distraction. But rather than get off the bike again, I put my head down and kept going.

  It was an interview with a philosopher of medicine, and she had an irritating voice, American and whiny. She started off describing to the interviewer the way that current medical science had been shaped, the way that people used to believe God was responsible for everything a body did and everything a person thought, but then when Descartes said the body was more like a machine that carried around a mind, suddenly it could be tinkered with: bones could be mended, bacterial infections fought with antibiotics rather than just prayer, tumours surgically removed. But more recently, she said, more and more evidence was pointing out the ways in which the brain and the body were one and that in fact separating out mental wellbeing from bodily wellbeing was not especially helpful. The philosopher said that we would do well to remember that the brain was meat, just like the rest of us.

  Both my brain and my body felt very much like meat as I pedalled along the road. The same gelatinous matter. I could see what she meant.

  The philosopher then said that she believed that even drawing a line between a body and its environment was wrong. She said there was no real line there. The human gut was a permeable membrane that exchanged matter with the world, taking it in, transferring it, expelling it. A human being couldn’t survive without a garden of gut bacteria obtained from the outside world, she said. So then, how could we draw a hard line between the person and their world? Where exactly was that line between the human being and the environment? And our lungs too, she said, our lungs exchanged gases, like a tree – stand next to a tree and you were exchanging gases with that tree. And our ears and eyes and brains too, processing waves of light and sound.

  And suddenly, riding by myself along that lonely road, I felt part of things, part of the landscape as I moved through it, puffing. I breathed the cold air as I rode – cold air in, warm air out. I could feel it as I went, the temperature of my throat alternating: cold, warm, cold, warm. A crow was flying in the distance. Was it having the same experience of moving through air, and air moving through it, as I was? And then the philosopher was talking again about lines. Lines, and where we decide to draw them. A virus couldn’t live without a human cell, she was saying, so where was the line between the human being and the disease? Cancers and autoimmune diseases and genetic disorders only used human cells – there was no foreign body, no invading pathogen, no other kind of cell at all – so where was the line between the healthy human and the illness? And where was this ideal healthy body against which to draw an ‘unhealthy’ line? You could find it in medical journals everywhere, she said, but rarely in real life. And definitely not if the body standing before you had breasts and internal organs arranged to accommodate a uterus. Medicine was all about making decisions about where to draw lines. And those lines were always being revised. The healthy body, the one in all the medical journals, the one that every difference up until now had been measured against, was a male body.

  And that mattered, the philosopher said. That mattered a lot. Especially when we try to engage medically with the pregnant body.

  I screeched the bike to a stop. I sat in the gloam, my eyes taking in the m
oonlight reflecting off the road and the canola, as the philosopher spoke about the confusion medicine and society created for itself by trying to decide on the ‘oneness’ or the ‘twoness’ of the pregnant body. The biggest problem, as the philosopher saw it, was that we were way too fond of drawing lines between things. Body and mind – draw a line. Pregnant woman and foetus – draw a line. Sometimes, she said – most of the time – those lines are a useful shorthand, and provide a way forward in the very short term, like Descartes’ theory, but turn out, in the long run, to be detrimental, harmful and, most importantly, simply untrue. And if you think the field of medicine had it solved by ignoring the female body and just talking about male bodies, then you were forgetting the self-same trap it got itself into by thinking about the brain as something that was separate to the body but got carried around in it. Separating bodies and body parts, she said, was helpful right up until the point that it wasn’t.

  The podcast ended. Something strange had happened to me. I felt odd, kind of spread out. My cells were busy – it was like I could feel them working. My skin tingled in the cold air, and suddenly all the lines I had drawn, between myself and everyone and everything else, even between myself and my womb, felt wobbly.

  I took out my earphones and tucked them away in my pocket. I rode on, listening carefully to the sounds of night insects and moving air. Noticing the way I heard them, the way my ears and brain worked seamlessly together to process the sound.

  It definitely took more than an hour, maybe even an hour and a half, but by the time I wobbled towards the intersection and saw the two houses sitting there coated in a dusting of moonlight, my body felt alert, even to its own ache. I was enjoying it. I was enjoying my body for the first time in a while. I felt vitalised by the world around me.

  I was coming at the houses from the south, a new angle for me, and as I pedalled slowly closer on the bike, admiring the look of the old house in the moonlight, something about it struck me as strange. And then I saw why.

  There was an extra room. Strangely built, lopsided and flimsy-looking against the solid bulk of the house, hugging the back of the top floor. I stopped and sat there on Basil’s bike, looking at it. It was perched on top of a protruding bit of the storey underneath, with a small window of dark glass. Sitting on the bike there, with the moon shining so bright, it occurred to me that I would be all lit up in the blank landscape – that if someone was standing up there looking out of that dark window, it would seem as if they were an audience in a darkened auditorium, and that I was standing on a spotlit stage in front of them. And while I reminded myself that it was only a dark piece of glass that watched me, I felt the small hairs stand up on the back of my neck.