Of Ashes and Rivers that Run to the Sea

by Marie Munkara

  Although I am uncomfortable about sleeping at mummy’s place with the front door wide open and nothing covering me, the wide expanse of sky is terrifying. The sky seems to go on forever and I feel like an amoeba under a microscope. The trees rustle menacingly above while the noises of the night keep me on edge. There are little rat-like creatures flitting around the pandanus and I pray they don’t get curious about our camp and come down to investigate as I’ve heard about rats trying to eat people during the Great Plague of Europe. The crashing of the waves is annoying the hell out of me and every time I hear a mysterious splash I freeze in case it’s a monster crocodile sneaking out of the water to attack us and I have to run for it. My exit strategy to the back of the ute has already been planned and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that crocs can’t jump that high. I’m grateful for the campfire though and am sleeping with my back to it for warmth and so that I can keep an eye out in case anything tries to creep up on us in the darkness. Not that I can see much, of course, it’s too dark. Everyone is snoring, even baby Casmira, I don’t know how anyone can sleep with all that racket.

  I’ve tried hard to enjoy myself for three days but I hate it here. I haven’t stopped scratching my fucking head and with the way mummy pats her dogs and then sticks her fingers all over my food before she hands it to me, I’m going to have to give myself a good worming when I get home. I’ve worn the same clothes for the whole time because some arsehole has stolen my spare ones, and I stink. I’ve got a strange rash on my arm that I think is scabies, I’m sunburnt and if I feel gritty sand between my toes for much longer I’m going to scream. Louis has killed a wallaby and is gutting it just above the tree-line. I think of its soft brown eyes and the little paws like Skippy ‘the bush kangaroo’. I’d only recently learnt that the little paw on the TV show that opened doors and picked up keys wasn’t Skippy at all. It was a kangaroo’s paw stuck on a stick. That really disappointed me and I think that sometimes it’s best to remain ignorant about things.

  It’s evening and some huge green turtles have decided to land on the beach and lay their eggs. Mummy tells me that they always come back to the place where they are born. Everyone is quiet as they drag their huge bodies up the beach because if you make any noise they’ll turn right on around and go back into the sea. I’m fascinated as I’ve never seen turtles like this in the wild and I know that I am experiencing something truly amazing. Then when they’ve laid their eggs and are lumbering off again my brothers go over and start to turn them on their backs.

  ‘What are they doing?’ I say to mummy. But she just ignores me as she detects another bout of hysteria coming on. I think of the effort it took the turtles to drag themselves up the beach and lay their eggs only to end up in our bellies and something inside me snaps. I run over to my brothers screaming at them to leave the turtles alone. They don’t know what to say and stand there warily watching me as I’ve had a few hissy fits over the past few days. These turtles aren’t like the little ones kids keep for pets, they are as big as me, but I manage to turn the first one over and am struggling with the second one when Aminay calls out from somewhere behind me. He tells my brothers to let them go. So they turn them back over and let them go.

  I’ve had enough and I just want to go home. Aminay feels my suffering and he comes over and sits beside me on the sand. We watch the waves. Each one that rolls in and away is taking me closer to the time when I can get the hell out of here.

  3.

  The sun has just risen over the top of the trees and turned the sea a pearly pinky gold. My mum hands me a cup of black tea and my eyes water as the astringency of the tannin hits my tongue and makes it shrivel. As usual it tastes like the whole packet has been tossed into the billy and left to stew for a week. This is bad enough but the thought of all the powdered milk and piles of sugar that everyone else puts into theirs makes me cringe. I hold my breath and pour it down hoping once again that it won’t damage anything on its journey through my intestines. I’m still in a huff from the episode with the turtles the night before and I gather my bits and pieces together in silence while I listen to the chatter around me. Last night was the tipping point and I’m going home today as I can’t stand the thought of spending another minute here. Old Aunty Blanchie is still in a huff too after watching the turtles, her favourite food, swim off, and there is a tension between us as tight as a bow string. She shoots me a dirty look before turning her back on me. My mum says it’s just me and Aminay going to the airport and we need to be there by eight o’clock for the morning plane. I’m hurt that mummy isn’t going to see me off. She doesn’t even wave goodbye as we drive away, she just goes on chatting to Aunty Blanchie who turns to give me one last filthy glare before resuming their conversation.

  The bush looks different and not as vibrant as it had the day before. We pass the spot where my mum told me there was a native beehive they call sugarbag. What a stupid name I think, sugarbag, why don’t they call it a beehive with honey like everybody else? Thinking about that makes me feel even grumpier and I just want to get on that little plane and fly right on out of here back to my old life. I’ll write and send Christmas cards, I think magnanimously. I won’t give them up completely, after all they are family, but I know I don’t want to go putting myself through this again in a hurry. We pass the Tarntippi turn-off which cheers me up because I know we’re nearly there.

  But we have to go right back to Nguiu instead of stopping at the airport as we have to ring up to see if there’s a seat available for me on the plane. The thought hadn’t occurred to me that there mightn’t be and desperation paints pictures in my mind of me stealing someone’s tinnie and boating back across that seventy kilometres of Arafura Sea where there are no whales but, according to my mum, lots of sharks and stingers and crocodiles. Aminay emerges from the telephone box and gives me the thumbs up and my knees go weak. I’ve got a seat, thank fuck for that.

  ‘Nimbungi,’ says Aminay giving me a hug at the airport. And then he drives off down the road without even a backward glance while once again the sandflies and mosquitoes arrive in their thousands to feast on me.

  But something feels wrong about all this. I didn’t want it to end this way. Although I’ve had a crappy time I wanted these people to tell me they were sorry I didn’t grow up with them, and that they loved me, because that would have made all the crappiness of this strange place bearable. But no one did, not even mummy. I try to console myself with the thought of the bar waiting for me at Darwin Airport but my heart feels like it’s sitting on the bottom of the ocean.

  4.

  By the time my plane reaches Darwin I have convinced myself that this is all for the best, after all, I’ve grown up in a different world to my new family and I’d never fit in there anyway. I snatch my luggage from the Airnorth pilot-cum-baggage handler and make a beeline for the Ansett check-in counter. It’s only been ten days since I was here but it feels like a lifetime. Grabbing my boarding pass I head for the bar. I’ve got a few hours to kill before my plane leaves and I’m determined to make up for lost time as I sink a gin and tonic in about thirty seconds. Pausing for breath as the barman makes me another I survey the other patrons. They look like the same bunch of shady characters and blackfellas as last time except there are now three women quaffing beer at the next table as well. They smile and nod amiably in my direction but I turn away. My sister and I were brought up knowing that nice women don’t drink beer. They only drink wine, or they’re if feeling adventurous white spirits. By their beer drinking and attire these women are the type that the old bat would call ‘common’ and ‘tarts’ and although they are in all probability nice and decent people my upbringing compels me to treat them with a contempt reserved for lesser beings. I’m about to lift my ‘white spirits’ to my lips when I’m struck by a rather alarming thought. If they knew where I’d spent the last ten days maybe they wouldn’t be nodding pleasantly at me. Hell, that’s something to think about. Then I start to wonder if a whiff of the miserable bush foods
that I was forced to eat if I didn’t want to starve to death has been seeping unobserved from my pores and is being wafted around the rooms by the ceiling fans. Christ, what if people can smell me? I bend my head down as if to check my shoe and have a good sniff of my armpit. I washed it with sea water that morning like my mum showed me and it actually doesn’t smell that bad, but I get my Coco Chanel out of my bag and have a discreet squirt before checking the clock on the wall. I’ve still got an hour.

  I have a window seat and as we take off I bid Darwin my fondest of farewells because I know that as interesting as it was to meet my family and see where I spent my first few years of life, I will not be coming back in a hurry. My life is in Melbourne where I can eat food that’s got a label on it telling me what it is and everyone isn’t black and scary-looking. Where I can sleep with the front door shut and securely locked and where there are bottle shops aplenty.

  The lady sitting next to me asks if I’m from Darwin. I’m not very fond of strangers enquiring about my business but the gin and tonics and my fragile state of mind after my recent experiences have left me vulnerable and exposed. My tongue is primed and ready for action and I blurt out the hardships of the last week and a half while she listens intently. Well, isn’t that amazing, she says when I finally come up for air to wave down a stewardess for a drink. She tells me that back in the 1960s her son-in-law flew the planes from the Tiwi Islands that brought the kids in from the mission. I am astounded and digest this piece of information while my mind travels back in time to the young pilot who was flying my plane in 1963. I know before I ask the question that she is going to say yes, her son-in-law had blond hair and a beard, my gut knows that we are talking about the same man. When I ask she is surprised that I remember him at all and we marvel at life’s capacity to throw coincidence into our faces so brazenly. When we disembark I ask her to pass on my good wishes to him.

  I am rattled by my chance meeting with this woman because I read omens into everything, like if a crow lands on the clothesline something is going to happen to the person who owns the piece of clothing nearest to it. Or if I see a squashed animal on the road I’m going to have a shit day. Omens are my early-warning radar system and they’ve never let me down. Later as I soak in the bath with a piece of takeaway pizza in my hand I think about the young pilot spiriting me away from the islands when I was small. And I don’t have to think too hard about what meeting his mother-in-law portents. It means that where this pilot broke the chain all those years ago when he flew me away from the Tiwi Islands, so meeting his mother-in-law has now joined the broken link back together. It means only one thing. That I have to go back.

  But now I’m home I haven’t the courage to tell everyone that I’m going back because I know they’ll try to talk me out of it and I know they won’t understand if I tell them about the omen because only weird people do things like that. And even though I’ve made up my mind now and I just want to get it over and done with, I know I have to be sensible and organise things properly. But my head is in a muddle. Which suitcase will I put my fossil collection in? Will my Japanese kimono with the little patch sewn on the arse fit if I take all my Graham Greenes and Lawrence Durrells? How much wine can I squeeze into a suitcase if I leave some of my nail polish behind?

  And with my head full of such things my work at the Health Department starts to languish as I shift paper around on my desk and clean up the staples that have fallen out of their box in my top drawer and try to look busy. A few days later I am grateful for the distraction of the Indigenous Health Conference. It is full of the usual wankers talking their customary garbage about improving the health of Indigenous Australians. I watch them throwing responsibility back and forth like a hand grenade that’s about to go off. I think of the clinic on Bathurst Island with the whiteboard in the waiting room that has a list of people on it who need follow-up treatment for syphilis, and the kids with candles of snot streaming down their faces and the dog shit all over the place. I think of the stagnant and stinking grey water sitting in people’s yards and the garbage blowing in the wind. Are we talking about the same Indigenous health here, I wonder?

  I spark up when the conference-goers meet for drinks at the bar afterwards. Apart from relieving the stress of the day it’s a good opportunity to watch the wankers let down their guard while my workmate Johnno and I observe the flirtatious looks and listen to the loosened tongues and make discreet comment. Yes, ‘Boufant Hairdo’ and ‘Bass Baritone’ will definitely fuck each other tonight. Oh, did you hear the bit when ‘Big Arse’ said ‘Small Dick’ didn’t know what he was talking about, like she’d know anything!

  At seven o’clock we drift into the restaurant. The food is divine. Johnno is next to me at the end of the table in his wheelchair and is an extroverted bundle of energy. He is also a bit of a wine connoisseur and along with his running commentary on Australian wines and the footy scores, keeps topping up our glasses. I don’t complain.

  ‘How do you drive your wheelchair when you get drunk?’ I ask him. He laughs and just keeps pouring. I know we’re getting really drunk now because the bloke opposite who has beady eyes like a crab and a mouth like a cat’s arse is starting to look real good and I’m feeling the best I’ve felt in the two weeks since I came back.

  ‘How was your trip up north?’ Johnno segues from our conversation about New Zealand wines, which instantly wipes the grin off my face. My stomach starts to churn and then gurgles like water going down a curly drainpipe and I silently curse him. I take a deep breath to make my guts settle but the gurgling gets worse and I know I’m in trouble. For a split second our eyes make contact and his go wide as he realises I am going to spew. He tries to back away from the table but only manages a forty-five degree turn as his colostomy bag drops onto the floor and he runs over it at precisely the same moment that I deposit my meal neatly into his lap. Within seconds the pong of the flattened colostomy bag permeates the air and the restaurant empties in one gigantic wave with my good mate bringing up the rear in his wheelchair. I hit the fresh air just as Johnno, on my heels, gags and brings up his food as well.

  My boss is furious with me over my part in the melee at the dinner and the bill from the restaurant for a new carpet. But I feel his anger is unjustified. I only threw up and I wasn’t responsible for the colostomy bag being flattened and releasing its contents.

  ‘New carpet,’ I say, hoping to appeal to his budget-oriented brain. ‘That’s going a bit far, isn’t it?’

  He gives me a look that I take to mean shut up.

  The next day I find myself sitting at his desk again. I’ve informed him that I’m leaving my job. After all, it doesn’t hold much appeal for me anymore and the sooner I get back to Nguiu to fulfil my destiny the better. There’d been a bit of chemistry between us and although nothing serious had ever happened I find myself sweating as he looks at me with imploring eyes.

  ‘But why?’ he says. ‘What’s got into you now? Why can’t you just go for another holiday?’

  ‘I’m leaving.’ I say. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Look, you’re pissed off because I told you off …’

  ‘I’m not. I’m fine with that. I just have to go, that’s all.’

  We both sit in deep contemplation for a few moments.

  ‘I’ll ring you when I get there and let you know what’s going on,’ I say, knowing full well I won’t. He knows that too. He knows that as soon as I’m out that door he’ll never see me again. I get up and leave without looking back.

  PART 2

  1.

  It kept on being easier not to tell people I was going back to Bathurst Island because my mind was in enough chaos without having to deal with other people’s opinions. People just can’t help themselves when it comes to dishing out opinions, so without weighing myself down with complicated goodbyes and explanations I headed back to Nguiu a few months later to carry on where I had left off. Apart from going back because I believed I had to, the other side of the continent seemed like
a good place to go to get away from my white parents.

  But in order to know what happened next you will need to know how I was taken from my real mum and given to this white family to be raised as their own. Some of this information was given to me by my foster mother after I came back from Nguiu the first time as she probably realised I was going to find stuff out anyway and it would be better for her if she came clean. Some of it I found out myself, and some of it came from my family at Nguiu.

  It’s hard to imagine them being young because they always seemed so old, but my parents-to-be were in their late thirties when one cold Sunday morning in May of 1963 they undertook their weekly pilgrimage to mass to commune with their good mate God. Little cloudy puffs of condensation would have been coming out of that car exhaust pipe as he backed out of the driveway while, as always, she would have been whingeing and fiddling around with the car heater in an effort to defrost her frozen feet. My soon-to-be siblings, fourteen-year-old Aubrey and four-year-old Julie, would have been in that back seat looking out of the passenger windows at the bleak landscape and maybe wishing they were somewhere else. And when they arrived at the church and filed reverently down the aisle and into their pew, they wouldn’t have known this was going to be a turning point in their lives. Because instead of hearing about God’s usual trials and tribulations they were going to be told about the Sacred Heart Missions up north where a group of poor misconceived Aboriginal kids were waiting for the good Lord to bless them and find them a ‘good home’. And there were plenty of these kids to choose from too, so all the kindly parishioners had to do was open their hearts up just a little crack and let the light of compassion shine right on out of there and right on into the welfare office where they could sign a few papers and change some little black kid’s life forever.