‘What do you mean, you don’t have a rice cooker? All Islanders have rice cookers.’
‘I don’t cook, really. If I had to cook rice, I’d do it in the microwave.’
He had his head in a cupboard and pulled out a small saucepan. ‘I’ll learn you to cook rice on a stove. But you’ll have to get a rice cooker. Sunbeam one, wat. Not any other brand.’ He poured the rice into the saucepan, and added water using his finger to measure the depth. ‘Mum taught me how to cook rice on a stove. She made me promise never to use a microwave.’
He found a chopping board and a knife and sliced the herbs. A rich, sweet perfume floated in the air, like the notes of a love song.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
He held out some strips of the fragrant green leaf for me to smell. I touched his hand as I leaned in, so soft. ‘Coriander.’
He chopped bird’s eye chillies, basil and mint, and talked about his garden on Friday Island, but I was only half-listening. I was too entranced by the way he concentrated as he chopped and smiled as he talked.
‘Hello. Any soy sauce?’
I pointed to the cupboard.
‘Great. Now these herbs have to soak in the soy to get the flavour. There’s a word for soaking food with flavours I heard on MasterChef. I just can’t forget it. I mean I can’t remember it. Do you know it? Probably not if you don’t cook.’ He looked up with expectant eyes and I wanted to melt.
‘Infuse?’
‘Yeah, that’s it. I’ll give you some coriander, basil and mint. It grows well. You do have a garden, don’t you?’
‘Yes, sort of. I inherited one from the last tenant.’
‘I’ll have to take a look, bambai, later.’
To calm my butterflies, I started asking questions. Was he born on TI? Yes. Had he always lived here? No. ‘What do you do at QBuild?’
‘I supervise the apprentices. Make sure they do their training, monitor them. And make sure they turn up to work. And relieve when other staff are on rec leave.’
I watched him slice the fish into pieces. I became mesmerised as the sinews of muscle moved under his chocolate-coloured skin. I had the urge to reach out and graze my fingertips along his forearm, over the sparse curls of hair. I was distracted again.
‘Ebithea, how do you light the stove?’
‘I haven’t used it yet.’ I got up and dug out a lighter from my backpack.
He lit the gas and poured oil into the wok. While it heated, he asked me what I ate if I didn’t cook. When I told him tins of tuna and crackers mostly, he said with a devious smile, ‘I’ll learn you to cook.’ He had flirting down pat.
‘That’ll be quite a challenge,’ I said, raising my eyebrows.
‘However long it takes, mark my . . . mark my, what’s that word?’
‘What word?’
‘Like when you say you’ll do something, mark my . . .’
‘Word.’
‘That’s the one.’ He tossed the fish into the smoking oil and beamed at me as the steam rose.
As soon as we sat down at the dining table to eat, the dogs squeezed between our feet. The meal was delicious: golden fried fish and rice drizzled with soy sauce infused with herbs. Then again, a bowl of watery gruel probably would have tasted as divine as long as Jonah was dining with me.
‘Matha nice.’ He pushed his plate away and leaned back. ‘So, are you running away from something by coming here?’
‘Sorry?’ I almost choked on a fish bone.
‘Plenty of people who come here are running away from something – man or woman trouble, money problems, crazy family, drugs.’
‘Right. Well, I wanted a simpler life, not having to drive to work, that sort of thing, I guess.’
‘Anything else?’
I hesitated, but I did want him to know I was single. ‘I broke up with someone six months ago. And I want to learn more about my mother’s culture because she’s never told me much about her life here.’
‘I can help out with culture. We can start lessons on Thursday night when I am back from visiting the outer islands.’
I had to stop myself from falling off the chair. He wants to see me again. ‘What’s on the curriculum?’ I asked in my calmest voice.
‘Night spearing.’
He explained that he would use a long bamboo spear to pole a dinghy over the reef as the tide rose and fell, and then use that same spear to hunt fish and squid. He learnt night spearing from his father as well as fishing and hunting deer and pigs with a rifle and bow. I could have listened to him all night as he talked about the thrill of catching a large fish or stalking a deer for hours, only to release the arrow and hit a tree. His hair rippled when he laughed and I imagined his large, soft hands on my body.
‘Would you like a tea or coffee?’ I asked, hoping to keep him to myself for a little bit longer.
He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s eleven. I’d better go. Tomorrow morning I have to catch the six o’clock ferry to Horn Island. Come on, Buzarr.’
He’d offered to wash up but I’d told him not to worry about it. I needed something to do because I knew I wouldn’t fall asleep easily. I was well and truly under his spell.
Chapter 20
The next day, Jack and I interviewed Tonny Gava, a massive simple-minded youth who led Dave Garland’s behaviour management team, or BMT as it was known. Tonny’s obesity was almost unbelievable and his limited intelligence made him a perfect choice for the BMT. He wouldn’t question the integrity of Dave’s cultural discipline of the children who had trouble controlling their anger.
‘Mr Dave told me to use culture, but not to go overmark,’ said Tonny, with the naïve expression that comes with ignorance. He held out a balled fist. ‘See, I can’t do that cos it’s against the law, but I can do this.’ He opened his hand and slapped his head. ‘Ouch.’
Tonny was paid a bonus in the form of an overtime payment if he kept the kids out of trouble for a week, even though he never worked overtime.
‘It means I get paid on the holidays if I do the overtime that I don’t really do. It’s cool.’
I suspected serious breaches of the Education Queensland code of conduct arose from Tonny’s allegations.
‘I’m not gonna be in any trouble, am I?’ he asked as he signed his statement.
‘You’ve only told the truth, Tonny,’ I said.
‘S’pose so. Better go. Didn’t tell anyone at school I was coming here. Brought a couple of the kids with me. Wasters, they are.’
Jack and I followed him as he shuffled to the foyer, his arms almost at right angles to his inflated sides. He roused at the two thin boys, aged about ten, waiting for him. One was holding a can of Red Bull and drinking from a 1.25-litre bottle of Coke and the other was eating Twisties.
‘Gimme my Bull,’ said Tonny.
The Red Bull boy handed over the can and the last thing I heard was the hiss of escaping gas.
‘You should see his girlfriend,’ said Jack.
‘Let me guess, is she as fat, as thick, or both?’
‘She is gorgeous. She’s got green eyes and straight, light brown hair. Absolute stunner.’ Jack crossed his heart. ‘She did some modelling down south, but came back to be with him.’
‘It must be his sexual prowess?’
‘No, no. It was maydh. His father got the maydh for him. He was hardup.’
I laughed. ‘That’s hilarious.’
There was no trace of a smile on Jack’s face. ‘I’m not joking. How else would he get a girl who looked so good?’
In the afternoon, Jack came in with a statement signed by Rachel Isaacs, one of the teacher aides who corroborated Robby’s allegations. She alleged that the year-seven teacher gave the NAPLAN questions to the children as homework the night before the test last year. What’s more, after the NAPLAN exam, Dave directed Rachel to
change the children’s multiple choice answers to the correct ones and he rewrote some of the short answer responses.
‘Do you think Dave killed Melissa because she was about to expose him?’ Jack asked.
‘It’s a possibility. I can’t believe it can take so long to solve a murder on a small island.’ A thought came to me. ‘Could we use maydh to solve it?’
‘No,’ said Jack. ‘It’s only used to make people sick or to get them a lover. Hey, if you want a man, I know someone who can—’
‘No thank you. I’m not that desperate.’
Sissy and I did one round of the island on foot and picked up a bottle of red on the way home to take to Maggie’s for dinner. I left Sissy in the unit but before I’d knocked on Maggie’s door, Sissy was howling.
‘Bring her over,’ said Maggie, ‘but we’ll have to make sure she doesn’t eat kittens.’
Maggie had befriended a cat that lived in the drains outside her office. She won the creature’s trust with food and eventually brought it home. A fortnight later, the cat produced four kittens, which were now five weeks old.
‘I named her Chook, after a childhood dog.’
‘Is there a vet on the island?’
‘One visits every three months, but one of the nurses, Kelly, is great. Her sister is a vet so Kelly follows her advice. She’ll arrange for antibiotics, if need be. The only thing Kelly can’t do is desexing.’
Sissy sniffed Chook and her kittens, who were running around, and then she wandered off to explore the unit. Maggie gave me a ginger drink she’d made with chopped mint that kept sticking to my throat making me cough. Maggie was 54 and single. Her soulmate of ten years was killed three years ago.
‘He was riding to work and got hit by a truck.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I miss him. Don’t mind me. I’m not as bad as I was a year ago. At least I’ve got Chook now for company.’
I didn’t know what to say, but I coughed and coughed and finally retched up the offending piece of green. After that, I stuck to wine.
We sat on lounge chairs around the coffee table and ate chickpea casserole with freshly baked bread and a dessert of homemade banana yoghurt. Her dining table was covered with paper cut-outs, pens, a couple of Stanley knives and a plastic cutting board.
‘I do screen-printing and sew the fabric onto clothes and bags. I get quite a few orders for them too. And sell them at the monthly markets uptown. They’re on this Saturday. You should come.’ I thought of suggesting to Jonah he might like to come to the markets.
So Maggie and I made a date for Saturday morning.
When I got back to my unit about nine, I’d received a lengthy text from Mark, saying he was deeply apologetic about his ‘indiscretion’. He admitted to not knowing what he was thinking and was ‘filled with remorse’. What timing! What a hoot! He might have been outlining a defendant’s guilty plea. Delete.
I was getting carried away by fantasies of Jonah and me strolling arm in arm through the markets when my mother rang to see how I was going.
‘It’s not as laid-back as I thought. I didn’t expect a murder.’
‘You know murder like the back of your hand. How are you finding life on a small island?’
‘Fine. Having a better grasp of Broken English would help.’
‘You’re lucky English is your first language. As a teacher, I know it’s hard to learn English when you have Broken English as a first language.’
‘Mum, can I ask you a question?’
‘Tell me about the weather. It’s the end of the wet season. Is the sager, south-easterly, blowing?’
I sighed. ‘No wind at all. The sea is like a pond.’
‘Mut-thuru. Do you know that word?’
I wanted to say how could I possibly know the word, but I’d get the usual quip about my sharp tongue cutting myself. She told me mut-thuru meant flat sea. She also asked if I had seen some Torres Strait pigeons. She talked about gardening on Warral at this time of year and how the root vegetables planted before the wet would be close to ripening now. Once Mum started reminiscing about her island life, I wasn’t going to interrupt her by asking about Yenah. I’d wait a bit.
I’d worked out that Islanders don’t ask questions the way Europeans do. Take my grandfather, Athe Willy, athe meaning grandfather. Mum and my aunt referred to him as Father, not Dad or Papa. Mum treated him with formality, like she would a priest or doctor, something I could not understand until I told her a few months ago that this job was up for grabs and she pressured me to apply. Not only did she start to talk about her childhood, more importantly, I started to understand what made her tick.
Her father, a pearl diver, had urged her to marry a white man, buy land and have a better life.
‘Why would he tell you to marry a white man?’
‘Because white people were seen as superior. They made decisions, they had power and the safe jobs like police, managers, business owners. The Islanders dived for pearl or worked on the cargo boats. If I could not marry a white man, the next option was to marry an Asian – at least they owned shops. White people and Asians weren’t under the Act, you know, the Department of Native Affairs control. You would have heard about the DNA.’
I had because it had featured in the media, most recently when many Islanders received payments from the Queensland government acknowledging that for years in the late forties, fifties and sixties, Islanders had worked for the DNA for below award wages. It never occurred to me to ask Mum whether this affected her or her immediate family. As far as I knew, she had worked at the hospital till she married my father and they left the island. Only three months ago, Mum told me she and her sister received a 4,000 dollar payment as compensation. I was gobsmacked.
‘And after Father passed away, I started to wonder whether the white way was better than the Islander way, after all.’
‘Why didn’t you just ask Athe Willy while he was alive?’ I asked, thinking it was pretty obvious.
‘A daughter of my generation would never question her father.’ She frowned. ‘Your generation thinks nothing of asking questions we would consider rude. When Father asked, no, advised, no, told me to marry a white man, I knew it was for the best.’
In 1960 Dad and Mum met at the Valentine’s Ball she’d attended with her girlfriends, Lily and Iris, at the town hall. At the time, Dad was a teacher at the primary school.
Mum loved my father and the ‘better’ life he offered. He encouraged her to do her senior certificate and later her teaching diploma, but she was an island girl who found herself raising three kids in the suburbs of Cairns. Her own mother led a traditional life on the family’s island, but Mum’s marriage was new territory, to her and to white suburbia, I suspect. I can’t imagine how she coped in the sixties and seventies. As an adult, I saw Mum and Dad’s relationship lacked laughter and passion and companionship. Whether that was because of their different backgrounds or whether they had fallen out of love after more than three decades, they were two strangers sharing a house, talking about nothing except the news and education.
So, after I moved home following my break-up with Mark, I learnt Mum had been questioning her life since her father died. She wondered whether she had done the right thing marrying a white man, pursuing education and buying land.
‘I feel separated from the life I started out living, like I was Islander and somehow I’ve become white. How is my life better than theirs?’ she asked, not wanting me to answer. ‘Sometimes I just want to go home and live the simple life.’
The week before I left for TI, we were having a cup of tea before breakfast.
‘Did something happen to make you leave TI, something serious, and that’s why you’ve cut yourself off from the place?’
‘Ebithea, don’t be ridiculous. Your father got a transfer back to Cairns.’ She stood up with her half-finished cup of tea and turned to me. ‘Think about wh
at your life would have been like if we’d stayed. No, I’ll tell you. You probably wouldn’t have finished school. If you did, you wouldn’t have a tertiary education. You would have several children to different fathers which, sadly, is what happens in small, welfare-reliant and uneducated communities. You can figure out the rest.’
I’d been told, but I was sure there was more history to Mum than she let on. From the little I knew, she’d seemed to have sacrificed her own life and culture for me and my brothers to get an education. I’d get to the bottom of it.
Chapter 21
First thing on Thursday, Lency said Mr and Mrs Tamala were in reception wanting to know why it was taking so long to bring Danny Soto to justice.
‘Tell them court is on next week and they’ll be advised of the outcome.’
‘And they’ll be in for a long wait,’ said Lency. ‘Honestly, people expect things to happen overnight.’
I peeked through the one-way glass at the Tamalas. Mr Tamala was waving his arms in front of Lency. I noticed three aluminium foil-clad loaves and a jar next to a sign, Aunty Doreen’s Best Ever Damper. Salome’s mother’s damper. I would buy a loaf when the Tamalas left.
Shay appeared in my office doorway to tell me the John Tonge Centre had called to advise the autopsy results had been emailed.
Deceased: Melissa Margaret Ramu. Time of death: Between midnight and 03:00 hours on Thursday 1 April. Cause of death: Blood loss caused by the severing of the carotid artery. Noted: Multiple lacerations to the face, and a fracture to the left temporal skull caused a non-fatal subdural haematoma. Semen and hair were present in the vagina.
Test results were pending on the carvings and the cap. An inquest would be held so a death certificate could be issued. Melissa. A wife and mother, gone. Mother’s Days, Christmases and birthdays would now become torture for Robby and little Alby. Life is so fragile.
My Island Homicide Page 13