Where We Begin

by Christie Nieman

  ‘Tell me about it,’ I said.

  And she looked at me and shook her head slightly. ‘You haven’t done anything wrong.’ And then she frowned. ‘Maybe I didn’t either. I actually didn’t have many choices.’

  The sun peeked at us through a gum tree, the leaves making it wink cheekily and reminding me of the sun-and-leaf-sparkling view from the memorial on the hill.

  ‘I think you were incredibly brave,’ I said. ‘I think you were incredible. Are incredible.’

  Cathy looked away from me and a silence grew in which it was clear she didn’t know what to say to that. It was awkward, but I was still glad I had said it.

  ‘How did you call Nassim, Mum?’

  She looked at me sheepishly. ‘I got the number from your phone last week.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I owed him an apology,’ she said, quickly popping chips in her mouth. ‘It took me too long to call.’

  ‘Well, thanks.’

  Mum shrugged, and after a moment I asked, ‘Hey, Mum, whatever happened to Becky?’

  ‘Becky?’

  ‘Yeah. Do you two still talk?’

  ‘No, I lost touch with her too. But you know what? I heard that she went on to become a funeral director.’

  ‘A funeral director?!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That is not what I would have expected of her from what you told me.’

  ‘I know! Me neither.’

  I laughed at the thought of Clooney-loving Becky being formal and solemn and ceremonial.

  ‘Maybe you should call her,’ I said. ‘It sounds like she was a pretty good friend. Not afraid to say the hard things to you. It’s good to have friends like that.’

  Mum nodded slowly. She scrunched up greasy chicken paper and shoved it all back into the paper bag it had come from. ‘And we might need her professional services after that meal.’ She tossed the car keys to me. ‘Okay. You’re driving. Bring it on home, my girl.’

  On the drive from Gundagai to Sydney, Mum watched the scenery out of the passenger-side window and told me about the last time she’d seen Danny – when Leonie had found him in a rooming house in St Kilda, drug affected and out of control, when I was only two. She told me that as she stood there in that smoke-smelling room, the pain of it all just tumbled down on her, the enormous realisation of what Hessel had taken away from her: the only decent thing she felt she’d had in her childhood, her little brother, stolen away from her. And how then, what she had seen when she was seventeen, Hessel attacking Danny, the memory she had lied even to herself about, came rushing back in so she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t function and Dad had to leave me with their friends for two days and come and fetch her and bring her back to Sydney. ‘Having to be without us both for those two days, Anna – it’s a big deal for a two year old. I’m sorry.’

  After that her PTSD really took hold in earnest – flashbacks and hyper-vigilance and traumatic shock and insomnia madness – but she never sought proper treatment because that would have meant telling the truth, and she was too ashamed, and too scared of saying anything that might mean she had to take a stand against Hessel. So she deadened it all with alcohol. Dad did everything he could to keep her afloat and keep it from affecting me: Mum had even had stints away in hotels when Dad had kicked her out during some revolting binges that she was ashamed to admit to. A percentage of her ‘conferences’ away had been her alone in a hotel room with a bottle.

  But she had never lashed out at anyone else before, she told me. It had always been simply self-destructive, she’d thought. She hadn’t thought it was affecting me at all. My jaw dropped. ‘How could you think that?’ I said. I had trouble keeping my eyes on the road. ‘How could you not know?’

  ‘I really thought I was doing a wonderful job at keeping it separate. It was my thing, I thought I had it contained.’

  ‘Not even remotely,’ I said.

  She nodded. ‘It’s amazing how alcohol can make you feel spectacular about being an alcoholic.’ She nearly choked on the word, but she got it out. I could feel hope bounding away inside me, out of control. I hoped it would be worth it.

  ‘But I couldn’t convince myself of that anymore, not when I saw that glass sticking out of Nassim’s arm.’ She closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘And the look on your face . . . I needed to accept that was me. My doing.’

  I gripped the wheel, concentrating on keeping the car straight on the road while my whole understanding of my mother and of my father and of myself shifted and changed and reassembled itself with this new information.

  All this, I thought. All this because of Hessel. Because of one man’s entitled determination to have his life the way he envisioned it, and his preparedness to inflict violence on others to make it happen. All this, from one horrible act of selfishness and self-righteousness and self-interest.

  We drove without speaking, looking at the stripped paddocks beside the highway. All around us boundary fences divided up the landscape, marking out ownership. Just like those paddocks that spread out from around Bromley Cairn and the gully. All this, too. This land that was taken, not given. Stolen, not bought. Wrought from the hands of the first people by thunderous acts of violent entitlement that reverberated, as all violence does, through people, through time, through landscape, spreading shadows that darken lives.

  All this, I thought.

  I drove on back towards my old life. Towards Dad and Nassim and city and home and school. My mother’s face in profile zoomed against the backdrop of the passing land; a soft face, vulnerable, weathered, against that beautiful battered land beyond. We hurtled along together, our two bodies, one from the other, flying through time and space, carving a path through a difficult, beautiful, imperfect world. We drove and drove and I looked around me, seeing, finally seeing.

  Seeing where we had come from. Ready to begin.

  30 September

  Dear Anna,

  I’m sorry this letter is so late – it takes me a long time to write anything.

  Basil is helping me write this and will post the letter for me. I am writing a letter to Kitty Cat too, to say thank you for what she said in court. Baz says that you might not know that I call your mum Kitty Cat so I should write that in too. Kitty Cat is your mum. You are Anna Panda. I just decided that.

  They said that if I go alright here I might get to work with the sheep. At the moment I am rooming with another brain injury like me. He is a pretty funny guy.

  Thank you for everything you said in court too. I like it here. I don’t think I would have liked anywhere else as much. My mum can visit me here too. I haven’t seen her this much in a long time. She visits me here every week. And it’s nice to have a proper bed and a proper telly.

  It’s really good that you and Baz are friends. Cousins should be friends. He is a good boy. He can teach you to listen to some good music. He has good taste in music. I taught it to him. Better than your mum. Baz helped me put this music on a stick for you. I hope you like it.

  I really liked your picture. I really liked looking at the three skulls. I like thinking about them now too, the way we are all inside skulls, but also outside of them too sometimes when we talk to other people.

  I was sad to hear in court that Kitty Cat got sick in her brain from seeing what happened to me. A doctor told me we all got a bit sick from how he was to us all the time, but that we all got really sick when that happened. I still don’t remember it.

  Baz says that you’re going to be a doctor. That’s really good. I think you will be really good. You have good eyes for a doctor. Doctors should have nice friendly eyes.

  I hope I will see you one day again soon.

  Love from,

  Uncle Danny.

  P.S. Baz said you have exams. Good luck!

  P.P.S. Baz says he and Leonie are going to fly up after your exams and stay with you in Sydney. He says your boyfriend is going to make them eat funny food and take them to the beach and show them how to surf. It sounds fun.


  P.P.P.S. Do doctors have fun?

  20 December

  Dear Uncle Danny,

  Thanks for the music – it’s really great! The Sigur Rós is my favourite, it’s been really good for studying. Do you recognise the postcard? Nassim and I went to the museum where he bought my picture, and they had these. I hope the skulls don’t freak your roommate out.

  Thanks for your good-luck wishes for the exams. They must have helped because I got a good score. Hopefully I do okay in the interviews next week. Won’t find out until January.

  I hope doctors have fun. I don’t think Basil would let me get away with not having fun, do you?

  Mum is in a program now to get better in her brain. They are teaching her how to get better and not to drink too much. Letters of encouragement to her are most welcome.

  We’re looking forward to coming to visit in January for your birthday, Mum and me. Mum says she always used to make a big deal about your birthday and she reckons it’s time she did it again. We will bring you something from our trip to Germany and hopefully Dad will come home with us and he can come too and meet you.

  Are you in with the sheep yet?!?!?!

  Love,

  Anna Panda

  UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES

  Sydney, NSW 2052

  11 January

  Dear Ms Krause,

  We are delighted to offer you an admissions place to study Undergraduate Medicine at the University of New South Wales commencing February of this year. You have qualified for a full offer. If you wish to accept this offer, please visit the website listed on the attached page and enter your acceptance code, also on the attached page, no later than 5pm 21 January.

  Congratulations again, and welcome to the University of New South Wales.

  Vice-Chancellor

  A note from the author

  While the setting of this novel is fictional, it is very closely based on places in and around the Moolort Plains area of Central Victoria.

  Permission for use of the Dja Dja Wurrung words in this novel has been kindly given by the Dja Dja Wurrung Aboriginal Clans Corporation.

  The massacre described in this novel is based on a real massacre that happened on the plains at Glengower in Central Victoria called the Blood Hole massacre. You can read about it at the University of Newcastle’s invaluable interactive colonial massacres map, which can be found at https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/map.php. It is a remarkable truth-telling resource.

  The memorial pamphlet excerpts in this novel are direct quotes from an existing souvenir booklet that marked the official opening of the Pioneers’ Memorial Tower in Maryborough in Central Victoria on Sunday, 16 April 1933, published by the Pioneers Memorial Committee. It can be found in the State Library of Victoria’s Digitised Item collection, and can be accessed through its catalogue entry, or through this link: http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/119767.

  Acknowledgements

  Endless thanks to David, who makes everything possible. And to Wendy and Graeme, for understanding about ‘the office’ and for being proud of me.

  Miriam Sved, Natalie Kon-yu and Maggie Scott are, I think Nat said it once, like oxygen. The best writers’ group/online support/cheer squad/family-of-choice in the universe, I would put money on it. And special thanks to Miriam Sved, who has always been there for my words and everything around them.

  Thanks to Stuart Winser, for being such a surprise brilliant intervening angel for this manuscript.

  I am lucky to be working with Claire Craig and Brianne Collins and the excellent team at Pan Macmillan, such talented, rigorous and smart people who don’t let me get away with anything less than my best.

  I am indebted to Aunty Kerri Douglas for keeping me in line over the representation of Djaara people in this book, and who applied her expertise and sense and smarts and herself to this whitey’s work. It was no small thing. Likewise, The Koorie Heritage Trust and Kath Coff of Nalderun Aboriginal Services Castlemaine gave me the opportunity to just sit down, shut up, and listen – this may have been a different book without that opportunity.

  I am endlessly grateful to the Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation for their permissions, advice, help, and their spirit of generosity.

  I would have been lost without the village: David, Nemo, Jappa, Bill and Chris, and Dana. Without them there would either be no book, or small children wandering the streets. And thanks to Rowena Kostos for helping me look smarter than I am by lending her excellent nursing expertise to the book.

  Thanks also to Simmone Howell for the reading and the enthusiasm, as well as Martine Murray, Anna Hedigan, and Libby Angel for the chocolate and the opinions.

  I would also like to thank Gillian Nieman, Mum, for her white-hot dedication, obsession, artistry, and her search for The Truth right up to the end: she set a glowing ember that still burns in me, even after she has gone out.

  And lastly, I acknowledge and pay my respects to the Dja Dja Wurrung people and their Elders, past and present, whose land inspired this book, and on whose country the book was written. Always was, always will be.

  About Christie Nieman

  Christie Nieman is an author, essayist, editor, parent and librarian. She lives and works on Dja Dja Wurrung country. Where We Begin is her second novel.

  Also by Christie Nieman

  As Stars Fall

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, institutions and organisations mentioned in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously without any intent to describe actual conduct.

  First published 2020 in Pan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

  1 Market Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 2000

  Copyright © Christie Nieman 2020

  The moral right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  This ebook may not include illustrations and/or photographs that may have been in the print edition.

  The author and the publisher have made every effort to contact copyright holders for material used in this book. Any person or organisation that may have been overlooked should contact the publisher.

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the National Library of Australia

  http://catalogue.nla.gov.au

  EPUB format: 9781760982881

  Typeset by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this book may contain images or names of people now deceased.

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