Cicada

by Moira McKinnon

  ‘Moira McKinnon’s vision of two women in flight across the

  vast and brutal landscape of the Kimberley creates an intense

  rush of a book whose actions and reactions bristle with the

  potential of both threat and redemption. Cicada is a taut

  experiment in style and space, and as Emily and Wirritjil run

  from tragedy and terror, they pass between each other all the

  possibilities of language and experience—birth and death,

  power and protection, misunderstanding and mess—as if

  there was some permeable scrim between the people they

  are and their ideas of reality.

  ‘Yet there’s a softness at the story’s centre, a strange and

  hopeful kind of conciliation in a narrative often delineated

  by the least that is good in us as humans. What renders it

  whole is McKinnon’s startling and microcosmic evocation of

  her story’s terrain—its birds, its rocks, its lore, its very grains

  of sand. In the way these things are realised on the page, I’ve

  never felt so much like I was breathing a place. As Emily

  and Wirritjil run on, the country rises up around them,

  engulfing its characters—and their readers—with visceral

  and intimate urgency.’

  Ashley Hay, author of The Railwayman’s Wife

  MOIRA

  MCKINNON

  cicada

  First published in 2014

  Copyright © Moira McKinnon 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in

  any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

  recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior

  permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968

  (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book,

  whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for

  its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that

  administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited

  (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available

  from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 74331 529 3

  eISBN 978 1 74343 297 6

  Set in 13/17 pt Adobe Garamond Pro by Post Pre-press Group, Australia

  For all the Wirritjils, especially Josie Farrer, who made this

  book possible, and for Mum, Fay, who is always an inspiration

  Contents

  1. Birth

  2. Flight

  3. Rest

  4. The Drive

  5. Reckoning

  6. River

  7. Walangkernany

  8. Fitzroy Crossing

  9. Ngarrangkarni

  10. Smith & Wesson

  11. Killing Stick

  12. Fire

  13. Rain

  14. Panariny

  15. Kathryn

  16. Turtle man

  17. Justice

  18. Janarra

  Glossary

  Skin Naming System

  Acknowledgements

  1

  Birth

  Emily could not look at the faces of the Aboriginal maids. She saw him in their curious glances and shy smiles, in the way they moved and in the scent of dirt and sweat. Blackgirl was a thin child with gangly limbs and large eyes. She bowed her head and looked to the floor as she held a dilly bag full of crushed green leaves from the pilirnji tree towards the nurse. Wirritjil was older and taller than Blackgirl. Her eyes flicked to the nurse and back to Emily, her lips moving in a quiet song, her bosom close and naked against the worn calico of her dress, and her shoulders flecked with scars scattered like grey streamers and confetti across her dark skin. She too held a woven bag full of leaves and herbs chosen to help the birthing process.

  Emily turned away from them. She reminded herself of their godlessness, their foolish ways. They were primitive, no heaven to go to.

  ‘Savages,’ she muttered, then held her breath as fear came like icy water across her skin.

  The nurse ignored Blackgirl’s offering and moved through the shadows of the flickering oil lamp arranging her instruments with precision along the top of the dresser: scissors, a curved knife with a sharp blade, a barbed hook, clamps, swaddling clothes and a bottle of chloroform stoppered with a brown rubber bung.

  On the stone walls covered thinly in coarse plaster, geckos with swaying bellies paused in their meander, lifting their heads high at any movement that was too quick or a whisper that was too harsh. The dark and airless room closed in on the women. Emily wanted to throw the doors open, to hear the raucous song of the kingfisher with his blue wings and snake-hunting eyes, and to smell the tang of the eucalypts that came with the coolness of evening. A spasm stopped her and she bent over, touching her head to her knees, as though that might stop the madness of the pain.

  She blinked away the salty sweat in her eyes and peered through the tumbled curtain of her hair. The nurse was waiting with a kind face and folded arms. There was no choice, now. Emily crept to the bed that was dishevelled and sticky from the two days of her labour. The nurse’s fingers pushed and prodded, leaving a trail of small pink arcs across the white mound of her belly. Emily looked at the dresser, the ceiling and the walls. Her eyelids were hot with the effort not to cry. She concentrated on the pale rectangular space on the wall where the wedding portrait had hung for two years. William had wrapped the painting in hessian and put it away in the stone dugout. To protect it, he had said. She imagined it on the wall again, William lean and elegant in his newly tailored suit. He was smiling and looking upwards as though thanking God for triumph. Behind him mounted above a fireplace was a Turkish Mauser rifle, a symbol of the victory of the war, the Great War. A glorious portrayal for it made it appear that he had been to war. The painting was tarnished not because of his duplicity but because she was in it, dressed in wedding finery, her hand gloved in silk and pearls, reaching up to his turned away face. Her father had remarked her countenance was of a sweet maiden lost in love, but he could not see, for it was not, it was the pitiful longing of one already cast aside.

  The nurse sat by her now, her skin parchment-like in the lamplight. She wiped Emily’s brow with a damp cloth and felt her forehead with the back of her hand. Emily gripped the nurse’s wrist.

  ‘He took it away. He could no longer bear the sight of a beggar.’

  ‘Rest,’ the nurse said, ‘there is work to do yet.’

  Emily fell back, thinking, thinking of his suit. It was gone now. His London clothes had faded in the heat of the tropics. His kindness had disappeared as the threads of finery had thinned. His words had become curt and his lovemaking a silent duty, a daily humiliation. There was a reason. There had to be a reason. There was an answer.

  Emily felt the movement of the child and the ache started again in her back.

  She was sure the child would be a boy. This child would bring happiness. She should think of William as she had known him before, who he really was, who he would be again, singing in rhymes, laughing at the joy and splendour of words. She would see the playfulness in his eyes and feel the breath of his kisses on her skin. This journey was God’s will, for He had known that her faith was lacking. He was teaching h
er that happiness can only be known through suffering and surely that was enough now.

  She prayed and closed her eyes against the nurse and the maids.

  In the kitchen, a pot of water boiled on the iron stove. The black cook, Minnie, kneaded flour to make bread for the nurse and the priest. Her skin hung like loose cloth over her bony body and her bare feet were callused and cracked. Corn and potatoes, insect-bitten and scorched with the hot dust of the Kimberley, were heaped in the corner. A fleshy red side of beef swung from a great hook in the ceiling. All was ready for the celebrations.

  The nurse’s instructions that had come muffled through the walls of the house were now frequent with bursts of strident command. Minnie put the dough on the table and sat very still, her floury hands folded in her lap. She listened to other sounds. She heard the scratch, scratch of the black butcherbird that had captured her old aunt. The old woman stuck her gnarled arm into the kitchen, her black fingers together and sideways like a wing, her eyes small and glinting with no white to be seen.

  Minnie gave her bread and took up a broom and chased her away. She thought of the singing they must do to free her aunt, but for now she must keep her from the house.

  Minnie wondered who had done wrong. Why had that bird come here to this kardiya house? Her feet curled over the roundness of the rough poles of bendee gum that marked the frame of the house and kept the stones of the floor from moving. She saw the bird with its coat of blue-black feathers flying in crooked angles down the track that led to the camp. The aunty hurried away, limping as she walked, free for a moment at least.

  The wilted grass of the house lawn twinkled. The rain had come quietly and quickly as though a mischievous spirit had splashed the land from hands full of water and it had nothing to do with the sky that was clear and sharp blue. A song, guttural and low, came from where the bush began, where the hill sloped upwards and was covered with brittle twigs of broken gums and patches of long grass, dried and brown, sticking with stiffness this way and that. Minnie’s lips moved, silently at first, then a rolling mutter that became the same song and she began to dance, her hands rising up slowly and shuddering down.

  Among the slender trunks of the stringybark trees, an Aboriginal man sat cross-legged. His snowy white hair, massed like a halo around his head, was stark against his black skin and his eyes were scarred, heaped white and blue with sand blight. His hands moved rhythmically as he beat together karrpakji sticks burnt with the jaarinji of the green ant.

  The sun sent rays of orange striking across the land and cicada nymphs, wakened by the rain, began to push through the earth. The wings of the newborns unfolded and the dirt crumbled from their bodies.

  Birds gathered in the trees and on the fence posts. They eyed the moist insects and ruffled their feathers as they prepared to swoop.

  Emily shuffled across the room, eased open a door to the veranda a little and peered out at the sun as it dipped in fierce farewell. She drank the air in great gulps then held her breath as a contraction began. Wirritjil and Blackgirl massaged her shoulders and her back, humming sounds that became part of the gathering dusk.

  Soon there was no space between the searing pains. The nurse made her lie down. Emily prayed in feverish knots and tumbles and swore at death and swore at God. In between she tried to rise, desperate to let the outside in.

  ‘Jawandi Jurulu.’

  The words were faint but the nurse glanced at her with a startled expression. The Aboriginal girls entwined their hands hard and looked with wide eyes into the shadows as though a demon had been let loose.

  The nurse shouted at Emily to breathe deeply and push hard. Push. Push. Suddenly, stop. Stop. Small breaths. Small breaths.

  The nurse gripped the baby’s head then caught his slippery body with her firm hands. She paused, her mouth frozen in a small ‘oh’, as if something was terribly wrong. The baby’s lips were dark blue and his chest did not move. Emily could see him, still and limp. She called out but the sound came as a whimper. The nurse looked at Emily and in an abrupt movement held the baby’s feet upwards. The waters and blood dripped from his body into a white enamel bowl on the floor. She slapped him on his back. He gasped, opened his eyes and cried at the sudden world.

  The child’s skin was the colour of dark mallee honey, and his eyes and hair black as a storm-filled night sky.

  Emily raised herself in the sweat of the bed and fought through dizziness to hold her arms out. Wirritjil and Blackgirl pressed their backs against the doors to the veranda, their gaze fixed on the bloody hands of the nurse as she dragged them across her white apron. The nurse wrapped the child in a clean cotton cloth in a single stroke and handed him to Emily. Then she stepped back, her face tight and expressionless. She opened the hallway door and spoke in a rushed whisper to the priest who was standing in dimness in a light cassock and soft slippers. The priest’s hand went to his mouth and he hurried away.

  Emily saw the child’s darkness and her heart pounded. She fought a wave of revulsion and held the baby at arm’s length towards the nurse.

  ‘Take him,’ she whispered. ‘He is not mine.’

  The nurse refused. Emily stared at his wide nose, his creamy brown skin with fine downy hairs drying light and soft. She wanted to drop him, to let him go. She was afraid of him.

  The child struggled, a small cry. Emily’s arms shook with the load. Wirritjil took a step closer to the bed. The nurse examined a pair of blood-stained scissors in the light of the lamp. She put the scissors down and took the bung from a bottle of ammonia. The smell cut through the cloying warmth of blood and birth. The Aboriginal girls’ noses twitched and their eyes watered. Wirritjil retreated, a single word came from between her closed lips in a faint hiss.

  The child cried again, a pleading mew. Emily’s lips trembled. She pulled him back to her, pulled him close. His eyes blinked, searching instinctively for the face that would nurture him. She put the tip of her finger against his red lips and his mouth curled to her touch.

  The baby’s wavering eyes steadied on Emily’s face. She smiled at his beauty and wondered at the silkiness of his skin and the perfectness of his ears. She did not notice the sudden stillness in the room or the shadow that came across her bed.

  She brushed her lips against the baby’s forehead and she saw his eyes fix on hers.

  ‘I am here.’ She touched his shoulders, his chest and felt his heartbeat against the tips of her fingers.

  It was then that her husband’s hand smashed hard and cold across her face. The child fell from her arms. She reached for him, but the room went dark and she was falling, and all she could see were William’s eyes burning and yellow.

  Jawandi Jurulu pulled the rim of his hat down against the setting sun. Rainbows flicked from the horses’ hoofs in the moistened dust. The stockmen from Cicada Springs station drove the two families of wild horses together. The horses jostled against each other, some with their heads down and backs aligned, others twisting their necks to snatch glimpses of the open plain. The two lead stallions were in the middle of the herd, fixing their eyes on one another, grasping at the familiarity of their rivalry as though that might shut out the greater evil, the men with their whips. The young horses stared with rolling eyes, searching for a reason for all of this and the pregnant mares swayed as they trotted, wanting only to stop.

  Jurulu rode lean and straight, his hands loose on the reins. He wore a rough cotton shirt, trousers with a leather belt and boots he had made shine with goanna fat. The whitefella hat he felt was really good. The shade of it rested his eyes when the sun glared hard. The whitefella clothes and shining boots made the other stockmen laugh. He didn’t mind that.

  Jurulu’s horse was a brumby, a short, square horse with a coat of uneven brown. The brumby was a long time wild before being caught and broken in, and he was troublesome for most riders. He was jiggling, sensing something going on in the herd.

  John, the head stockman, shouted from the other side of the horses, cracking his whip like
it was part of his hand, his body immobile and squat as if made of clay, ‘Blackie. Get back. Get back.’

  Jurulu made like he couldn’t hear. Didn’t make sense to move back. He wanted to wave his hat but he knew to stay low. He didn’t like that about whitefellas, how they told blackfellas what to do. Not all of them did that. Trevor, Boss William’s brother, didn’t do that, didn’t say much. He could see him surveying the muster from a slight rise, pouring water from his canteen into his hat and scooping it onto his face. He was a big fella and had red hair the colour of the Kimberley land.

  Jurulu felt the brumby lean back. A colt with a jagged lightning strike on his face broke from the herd. The brumby spun and galloped, overtook the colt and snapped back to face him. The colt’s eyes were fiery with the sun. He pawed the air and dashed forwards, his head and neck straight as a battering ram. Jurulu and his horse stood their ground. The colt danced backwards, reared and charged again, this time wheeling and breaking away.

  They ran the colt down. Red dirt sprayed from hoofs like arcs of blood. They reached him, neck to neck, pulled ahead, Jurulu touched the reins and the brumby turned in a flash to face the runaway. The colt came to a halt in a cloud of dust, his nostrils flaring and his neck wet with sweat. Jurulu pushed the brumby, just a step. The colt looked back to the herd and lowered his head.

  Jurulu spoke, words flowing smooth as a stream, telling the colt it was alright, alright to stop fighting, alright to go back to the herd.

  Trevor watched the young horse trot back with Jurulu behind. The setting sun had turned the broad plain of the valley scarlet and the trees were dark in haphazard groups or alone and stark on rocky outcrops. Jurulu moved easily with his horse, barely a touch on the rein, and it seemed as if they were one.

  Trevor thought of the soldiers mounting their horses at the barracks in Alexandria, their uniforms starchy from the factories of England, their backs stiff and unyielding and their eyes glazed with some inward dream. They had refused to be astonished at Egypt, the desert or the gruelling war in front of them. They chose not to face their dread but to blindfold it, to hide it behind the dress of glory. Their purpose was to kill, and their horses had no idea of that and for them there was confusion, their eyes wild and their mouths fighting the tight reins and the iron bits, practising for conquest in the swell of fear.