Cicada

by Moira McKinnon

  The Aboriginal man’s gaze was fixed on the other side of the yard.

  Trevor peered into the dusk. ‘Well, look at that.’

  A lone seagull sat white on the fence.

  ‘My mother,’ said Jurulu, ‘from saltwater country.’

  The gull swooped upwards and away, its widespread wings tipped with grey and striped with the strong spines of its feathers. It dipped and rose as though it was spying fish between waves.

  In the camp the stockmen sat around the fire. Jurulu stayed in the dark of the night, sitting on the fence, keeping watch over the horses. He heard the low hoot of the owl, the keeper of the dawn. His mother had taught him that if people did not respect the ancestors the owl would make it rain and rain until water covered the land. Whitefella must know this but they kept quiet. No-one knew how to fit whitefella into the way things should be.

  It was past midnight when Trevor came over, walking dark and light through the long shadows of the setting moon.

  ‘Next few days we move the stockyards to the waterhole that way.’

  Jurulu was quiet. Trevor looked at the pale shine of the moon on Jurulu’s skin. The man was lighter than a true blackfella but his nose was flat and his hair pulled into a topknot and stuck through with small bones and shells just like a full-blood.

  ‘You don’t want us to, do you?’

  ‘That’s Law place.’

  ‘Like sacred?’ Trevor shrugged, his body shook and he looked down, his chin touching his chest as if he had been reminded of something and was trying to remember the details. He let his shoulders drop and he walked away.

  Jurulu laid his swag by the fence and tried to sleep, thinking of the Law place and how he could stop the yards being there. He touched the cicatrices across his chest, six heaped and rough, four on each shoulder and more across his abdomen and down his legs. They were the lines of the desert or the waves in the sea. The Law was there like the songs, in the rocks, the trees and in the water and the sky. He thought of the stories stretching long across the land, across the plains with fine black silt, red rocks and jagged hills, and the black cockatoos with the fire in their tails, massing along the rivers and finding the wells and talking, talking of all things, of bush tucker and where the fish were struggling to breathe in the waterholes before the first rains of the Yuwinji, and saying, hey, the plums are getting ripe and sweet. Them tiyirannpe, you had to listen hard, they were real noisy birds.

  His mother was here for a reason, she was trying to tell him something but he couldn’t make out what it was. There was salt in the air from her being and it was sweet and carried memories of fat ocean fish, tayiwule, the white clean flesh busting from their skins on the coals, and flaps of the stingray cooking in the oil of their innards on a fire on the edge of that great blue place. That sea that was quiet one day and the clouds were in the water and mad with storm the next day, hurling white tops at the sky and the shore, throwing its anger, but that was the way things were and had to be. Always. Maybe she was telling him to come back. He would go back.

  Trevor brought his swag up to the yards and threw it on the ground away from the noise of the campfire. Jurulu watched him turn back and forth, stare at the stars and cross his arms over his face to sleep.

  In the very first light when the sky turns grey before dawn, Jurulu heard the putter of the boss’s Lewis motorbike changing gears as it pushed up the hill. It came down the thin track to the holding yards. The rider held a rifle upright on his lap. Jurulu stood up. Across the yard, Trevor opened his eyes, raised himself on his elbow and peered into the early morning. The dogs jumped to their feet, barking.

  William Lidscombe saw Jurulu standing against the horse yards. He laid the bike down and stood for a moment, staring hard at the way the black man rested his arm along the top pole of the yard, the way he leant down and reached for his hat and put it on and pushed it back a little. He felt hatred rise at the man’s familiarity with his property, hatred at the man’s nonchalance.

  William strode to where the stockmen were sleeping in their swags and butted them with the end of the Winchester. They shook themselves, surprised at his sudden appearance. They rose and he spoke with them briefly. William turned and walked towards Jurulu and the others came behind him.

  Emily stirred fitfully in the darkness. She was alone. Her breasts were stretched and full. She rose, sad with the pain that now had no purpose. She took the sheet from the bed, tore it and wrapped strips tight around her chest. She felt towards the dresser where she knew there was the porcelain washing bowl and next to it a ladle and a jug. She found the ladle and balanced it in her hand. Beyond the doors, stars filled the sky. The moon had long gone.

  Emily used the rest of the sheet as a shawl and moved like a ghost through the night. She reached the acacia hedge of miserly leaves and prickly twigs that marked the confines of the homestead. In the distance, she could see the huts that were the seasonal workers’ quarters and, further on, the smoke of the native camps. She looked back to the house.

  How did it happen, she thought, that our love did not last?

  She hurried to the fig tree. It was an ancient bush fig, tall and solid with sturdy, gnarled branches stretching outwards, dark against the starry sky. She saw the fresh-turned earth and began digging hard with the ladle. It broke, shattering china in the small dirt hole she had created. She dug with her hands. The shards of china cut into her skin and the blood soaked into the soil. She felt a smooth surface and traced along the rounded edges. A cardboard box. A hat box. She dug the soil from it until she could feel the base and with her fingers under it eased it upwards.

  Emily lifted the lid. He was pale now, dark hair flat against his skin. On his neck below the angle of his jaw was a neat line, black and slightly gaping, an inch long. Emily touched it. She knew that line. The cut to kill the rabbits caught in the traps on the moors near the Lidscombe estate, the straightness, the length, the glint of the knife followed by the spurt of blood soaking on the tufts of fur, the rabbit’s eyes wide and darting, the fright that ebbs away with life.

  Emily took the baby carefully from the box and held him close, listening as though his heart might beat again.

  The sky lightened in the east. At the workers’ quarters a door slammed. The cook shouted the dogs away from the door of the kitchen. Wirritjil, the Aboriginal housemaid, walked towards the line of the bush, carrying a bucket of ash. She stopped a short distance from the fig tree.

  ‘Miss?’

  Emily did not reply. Wirritjil came forwards. She crouched down. Her bushy hair was pulled back with twine and she wore bracelets of hair and kangaroo skin tight on the upper part of her arms. For a moment she covered her eyes with both hands, then she touched the child.

  ‘Him djinganarriny,’ she said softly.

  Emily’s heart missed a beat. ‘Joseph. I name him Joseph. I wanted to name him Joseph.’

  ‘Djinganarriny, bin go back, mebbe jarlanga.’ Wirritjil waved her hand towards the creek. ‘Mebbe,’ she looked up at the tree tops, ‘mebbe larna kunyjany yurru.’

  Emily clutched at the flour sacking that was Wirritjil’s dress.‘He is dead.’

  ‘He come back.’

  ‘Come back?’

  ‘Yes, miss. Him djinganarriny.’ She nodded. ‘Djinganarriny.’

  A dog barked at the homestead. Wirritjil looked to where the night was darkest towards the bush on the other side of the home paddock. She walked that way, stopped and turned back to Emily, waiting. Emily rose, and the sheet fell from her shoulders. She held the baby tightly against her bandaged chest.

  Wirritjil’s hips swung in an even rhythm as she crossed the dirt road that joined the distant horse yards with the homestead. She climbed between the logs of the fence into the house paddock littered with double gees and skins of dry paddymelons. Emily followed, not caring that the prickles and barbs stabbed her feet. Through the fence at the end of the paddock Wirritjil waited in a scrub of wattle bushes, each thick with many pencil-like trunk
s. Grey streaks widened in the sky behind the homestead.

  Emily reached her and sank to the ground. Wirritjil prised the baby gently from Emily’s grip and laid him in the skirt of her dress. She motioned for Emily to lean against her and she hooked her arms under Emily’s knees and lifted her onto her back. Emily could see Joseph’s face as they walked. His eyelashes were long, black and thick against his cheek, and his hands were close to his chest with his fingers curled into fists.

  They came to the home creek. The clear water was a few inches deep over sand and pebbles. Emily lowered herself into the water and blood flowed in black streamers away from her legs and her hands.

  Wirritjil gave her the baby and cupped water in her hands and washed the blood from his neck. She lifted her hands high as she had seen the kardiya do at the government station and dribbled water over his head.

  ‘Amen,’ she said.

  Emily looked up, startled. Wirritjil stood with her hands clasped together and there was just the sound of the water flowing around their bodies. Emily scooped water into her hand and let it fall over Joseph’s forehead and eyes. She whispered, ‘I baptise you Joseph Jurulu Lidscombe in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.’

  They sat silently for a few minutes. Wirritjil rose and walked away from the stream to a tall gum tree. Its limbs stretched high and white against the indigo of the sky.

  ‘Warlarri.’ Wirritjil turned to Emily. ‘Dat tree, ’im mother, Nambinel, ’e look after dis one djinganarriny.’

  An owl hooted low. Animals stirred with the promise of dawn and the finches already were chattering. Wirritjil put her hands on her hips and looked to the sky, listening to the owl and the sounds of the disappearing night and the coming day. She picked up a fallen bough and dug near the base of the tree. The soil was soft on the surface but lower down it was clay. Wirritjil worked steadily and soon she had a hole from north to south that was more than a foot deep and long. She stripped wads of bark that peeled in sheets from the great tree and stood with her hands full. Emily felt her waiting and willed it not to be. The sky was grey-blue and the baby seemed an angel in her arms.

  Emily hesitated then handed the baby to her Aboriginal maid. Wirritjil stood for a moment waiting for Emily to sing, but Emily was silent, kneeling with her hands pressed together in prayer. Wirritjil began softly, a chant to hurry the spirit child back to its place. They had always sung this song, even at Moola Bulla station where the whitefellas gave the blackfellas food and taught them how to work the kardiya way.

  Wirritjil wrapped the child in bark and tied the bundle with stringy grass. A breeze brought a distant sound of people shouting. The whirr of the cicadas faded then rose again. She placed the baby in the hole so that he faced east. Emily crawled to the edge and stretched down to touch him. Wirritjil waited then filled the grave with sand and covered it with the rocks from the edge of the creek and branches of wattle and Kimberley heath.

  The shouts began again, this time with the noise of dogs barking. Amid the barking was a sharp crack of gunshot.

  Wirritjil looked towards the homestead. Killing kangaroo, she thought, but there was something wrong and she saw a black butcherbird flying high in the sky, making a harsh cawing sound like a crow.

  Emily grasped the bushes on the grave. ‘God bless. God bless Joseph. He is baptised. Take him into your arms, into heaven. Amen.’

  There was silence. The sun behind them peeked over the horizon and the grey-blue of the landscape was streaked with gold.

  ‘Amen,’ repeated Wirritjil.

  They stood at the grave at the foot of the white gum. The small violet and white flowers of the heath bush were stars scattered in the green leaves of the wattle.

  Wirritjil walked to the creek then stopped and waited. Emily knew she was right. She had to go back. For Joseph. For Jurulu. To set things right.

  They walked across the house paddock, placing their feet between the nests of burrs.

  On the other side of the homestead, the old man, Juwurru Charcoal stood against a tree, his body as still as if he was part of the tree itself. A deep hymn rolled over his tongue, snarling into the land as he clacked together the two short sticks burnt with the jaarinji of the green ant in a steady loud beat.

  Wirritjil stopped suddenly, listening. Without a word she ran into the shadows away from the open sun, back through the home paddock and into the bush. Emily called out for her but there was no response, no movement, just the light of the sun spreading across the land. Emily looked to the homestead and steadied herself.

  Smoke rose from the kitchen chimney and slid downwards, mixing with the dust in the air. The homestead was silent. The birds and the cicadas were quiet. The bloodied sheet, caught on the fence, fluttered like a flag. On the lawn of the homestead Emily could make out the silhouettes of several men. They were loosely clustered, moving among themselves. Someone laughed. Emily hesitated then walked towards the men.

  A wailing, rising and falling, came from the native camp. Emily slowed. The men looked to her and away again. There were no women in the group on the lawn, none of the house help, no natives. All the station hands including the young ones, the strappers, were there. Trevor, William’s brother, was there, tall and red-haired. He stood apart from the others with his head down. William broke from the group. He held a rifle loosely in his hand with the barrel pointing down. He came to her and took her arm, pulling her to the house. Most of the men were staring in the direction of the fig tree.

  She snatched her hand away and ran to the fig tree. A man was slumped against the trunk. Shafts of light from the morning sun picked out the shine of blood, thick and scarlet on his dark face. On his forehead was a single rough hole.

  Emily stopped. She fell to the ground.

  Her husband was right behind her. ‘You are unwell.’ He shouted to the others, ‘Take him away.’

  He locked her in her room. She listened to the cicadas and the birds. Rising, diving, rising, dying. The room was dark and it seemed the world had stopped yet the shadows shortened then lengthened again.

  In the blackfellas’ camp, the chanting was low and monotonous, broken only by the clack-clack of the singing sticks. A small party set out carrying Jurulu, his body discarded by the whites, to travel to a sacred place and to join him once again with the land, with creation, with all the others.

  Blackgirl carried a tray, shuffling in tiny steps. Her feet were hobbled with a rope tied and knotted hard between her ankles. She put the tea on the dresser, dipped a rag into a metal bucket and began to clean the floor. Her hands shook as she worked.

  Outside two kingfishers heralded the night with a song that started with a shout and ended with a melodic rising laugh. Emily felt the pain in her belly return and her breasts ached. She rose and held on to the side of the bed. Blackgirl moved to help her. The hinges of the door squeaked and a cool staleness came from the inner stone reaches of the house. William stood at the door with a hunting knife and a riding whip in his belt. Blackgirl shrank to the corner of the room. Emily pulled herself to her feet. William walked across the room and sat on the chair by the dresser. He took his whip and tapped the leather braided knob against his boot.

  ‘The priest kindly took my note to telegraph your father and Kathryn with the sad news that our child was stillborn.’

  Emily knew she should accept that. He was giving her a way out.

  ‘He wasn’t stillborn.’

  The muscles in William’s face tightened. ‘He was born dead.’

  Emily stayed silent.

  William stood up. He fought with his words and they came undisciplined, wild with the village of his youth. ‘Hey, his bit o’ white ain’t give him no decency. You said his name. Nurse said. You knew, dinna ya? If he dinna, who did? Who spread ya? Who shuck ya?’

  A shaft of deep orange from the sunset sat across the room’s long shadows. The blade in William’s belt glinted. Emily wanted to say she loved him. She had loved him. William. But all she could think of was
the bird with its wings widespread sailing across the blue crescent moon. She whispered, ‘The whistling kite called to us.’

  William clenched his fists but kept them by his side. He turned to go.

  Emily gripped the side of the bed. ‘Once. I held him once.’

  William stopped.

  Emily waited. She felt herself weaken and she stooped, her hair falling around her in wet loops. The room spun. She slumped onto the bed. Blackgirl shuffled from the corner of the room. Emily pushed one hand against the cramp in her lower belly and raised her other hand. Her voice was weak. ‘Go away. Please, go away.’

  Blackgirl frowned and came close. She rubbed Emily’s abdomen in slow circular movements just as she had seen the nurse do. Emily felt a painful tickle in her breasts and a trickle of fluid. Circular stains appeared on her nightdress.

  A deep crimson colour rose in William’s face. He lifted the riding whip and in two strides was next to Blackgirl. He brought the whip down on her back. She fell at the foot of the bed and turned to face him. He used two hands and cracked the whip across her face.

  ‘Don’t touch my wife,’ he hissed.

  Blackgirl stayed crouched, staring into his eyes. Drops of blood appeared in the line of the whip mark, across her forehead and her nose, cutting across the corner of her lips. William lifted his whip again. He hesitated, dropped his hand and threw the whip against the wall. He paused to look back at Emily. Her face was turned away but he could see the drops of tears falling from her chin. Blackgirl rose and reached out to touch Emily. William sprung across the room and kicked the Aboriginal girl hard in the chest with the heel of his boot. He picked her up, forced the doors open with his shoulder and hurled her into the yard.

  The sounds of the night stopped at the sudden violence. William walked back through the room.

  ‘I will get you a white maid.’

  The cicadas began again in a drowning prayer. Emily crawled out to the veranda and down onto the lawn to the crumpled heap of Blackgirl. From the shadows a tall lithe shape appeared. It was Wirritjil. She gathered Blackgirl into her arms and called out, a desperate shriek that pierced the night.