Of Rembarranga descent, Marie Munkara was born on the banks of the Mainoru River in Arnhem Land and spent the first few years of her life on Bathurst Island. She now lives in Darwin.
RECENT DAVID UNAIPON AWARD WINNERSPUBLISHED BY UQP
Skin Painting by Elizabeth Hodgson
Me, Antman & Fleabag by Gayle Kennedy
Anonymous Premonition by Yvette Holt
Swallow the Air by Tara June Winch
Whispers of this Wik Woman by Fiona Doyle
Home by Larissa Behrendt
This book is dedicated to Pardy (Brian Sweet), who told me I could do it.
10 November 1932 – 7 March 2006
CONTENTS
The Bishop
The Brotherhood
Pwomiga
The Immaculate Misconception
The Sound of Music
Mira
The Big Wind
Wurruwataka
The Garden of Eden
The Bride-to-be
Tides of Change
Taking Leave
Noah’s Revenge
The Missionaries
Thomas
The Castaways
Punapi
The Good Doctor
Marigold
The Movies
Acknowledgments
About the David Unaipon Award
The Bishop
It had been a shit of a day for Sister Annunciata and Sister Clavier as they anxiously scanned the stormy sky for a break in the weather and the plane that had left the Big Joint an hour ago with the Bishop but had not yet arrived. Sweating profusely under her habit Sister Annunciata stomped back into the convent where she could find some relief under a fan from the stifling tropical heat.
The dramas of the day had begun at morning prayers when Matthew, Mark, Luke and John had absconded from the Mission to the bush camp and were refusing to come back. Even the threat of burning in the fires of hell for their insubordination hadn’t worked as the stubborn little buggers clung onto coconut palms wailing while the bush mob gathered to watch the spectacle. They always loved a good commotion and certainly weren’t disappointed as they watched Sister Annunciata drag Matthew from a nearby bark hut by one of his ankles and crack him across the arse with a digging stick that she’d snatched from the surprised yet unresisting hand of old Tarrti.
Nearby Sister Clavier tried in vain to loosen Mark’s grip from the trunk. If she knew any better she could have sworn that she’d heard the mother urging the other two boys to bolt for the scrub. But Sister had never had much of an ear for languages especially this one. Even after years of loyal service to the mission she had only picked up the faltering basics of the bush mob’s gibberish. But they all knew the bush mob were God-fearing people with a deep and abiding respect for the mission and its papally sanctioned quest to strip them of every vestige of their culture so they would never be defiant like that now, would they?
And then Mary Magdalene’s mother had butted in and demanded to know how her daughter had gotten pregnant when she was locked up in the girls’ dormitory at night and under the constant surveillance of the nuns. But if Mary Magdalene had told the sisters that the growing bulge in her stomach was from eating too much food then who were the sisters to dispute it. They’d never been pregnant, had they? And they had been only too happy to know that the humble mission fare of flour and sugar was a highly nourishing replacement for the fresh wallaby and fish that the girl had originally been forced to endure when she lived in the camp. And to top it off she had dared to tell them that her daughter was called Wuninga* and not Mary Magdalene. How many times did they have to explain to the silly woman that the girl had received the sacrament of baptism, a mandatory ritual that all incarcerates of the mission were required to undergo (whether they liked it or not). And baptism meant that one had to cast aside all one’s heathen baggage, including one’s heathen name, in order to be set apart from the other heathens who had not yet joined the ranks of the righteous. It was like talking to a brick wall.
*Possum
The discovery of Brother Michael behind the potting shed sculling a bottle of altar wine after the exhausting trial at the bush camp had not been well received either. His feeble excuse that he’d found it lying there and was tasting it to see what it was, was just about the final straw. And now they had to stand around waiting for a damned plane.
The weather was starting to intensify and the kids who made up the welcoming party at the airstrip at the expense of their Bible studies class were getting pissed off. Not because they were missing out on their scriptures, mind you, but because of Sister Annunciata’s belief in the old adage ‘The Devil makes work for idle hands’. There were no idle metacarpus here apart from those of the nuns, or metatarsus for that matter as the kids marched up and down in the rain and took it in turns to hold umbrellas over the nuns’ heads.
‘Sister Annunciata,’ a voice whined from behind.
But she ignored it and continued to scan the darkening sky.
‘Sister,’ it said with more urgency.
‘What?’ she snapped and turned around, nearly poking the poor kid’s eye out with the point of her umbrella.
It was Ignatius, of course. Who else would it be? Nobody else could get up Sister’s arse like this one.
‘Sister,’ he croaked, ‘I need to go to the toilet.’
‘You can wait!’
Sister Clavier was going through her own private turmoil as she silently prayed for the safe arrival of his Most Handsome and his Most Distinguished, the Bishop. Guilt over such licentious thoughts had long been abandoned and she now justified such thinking as expressing her appreciation, silently of course, for one of God’s finest creatures. To Sister he was the living embodiment of the Lord and she carried his precious image very close to her heart.
Meanwhile, his Eminence wasn’t faring terribly well as the plane dipped and bounced around the sky. He hated flying at the best of times and today was turning out to be a particularly uncomfortable experience. To take his mind off his discomfort he looked out at the fluffy clouds that gently floated past – a move that he instantly regretted, as the clouds chose that very moment to part, revealing the murky churning waves far below. His well-fed stomach involuntarily tightened, and making a silent prayer of forgiveness to his housekeeper as her lovingly prepared bacon and eggs began to resurface, he neatly deposited his breakfast into the seat pocket in front of him. His eyes darted guiltily towards the pilot but thankfully he was too busy with the task at hand to observe this little indiscretion, and the other two members of his entourage were otherwise occupied with heads bowed ardently in prayer. The Bishop quickly patted the seat pocket back into place and closed his eyes. Not to pray, mind you, but to hide his quaking fear as he tried desperately to convince himself that his old mate above would deliver them from this ungodly tempest. The plane suddenly lost altitude and lunged sharply to the right. He gripped the seat and started to pray like he had never prayed before.
At that very moment Sister Annunciata, who had been toying with the idea of returning to the mission, was hit with a blast of foul air. Without turning around she knew it was Ignatius and she knew he’d purposefully released his noxious fumes to punish her for not letting him go to the toilet. It had happened too many times before for it to be a coincidence and she’d previously thought of taking him to task over this issue, but was unsure of how to approach it without making herself look like a total fool. In fact if she didn’t know any better it would almost seem like a silent protest. But she didn’t believe the bush mob had the capacity to
think like that. She could only put such a display of bad behaviour down to chronic interbreeding. From what she’d observed, the bush mob were all from the same family. The way they all called each other aunty and brother and grandmother and so on, it beggared belief. And besides what could Ignatius possibly have to protest about? He’d been saved from a life of misery in the camp with his family and given a wonderful new culture called Catholicism to embrace. She had tried speaking to Father Macredie about Ignatius but he had only looked at her like she was a raving lunatic and suggested she review her vows of compassion while inwardly lamenting the fact that she hadn’t taken the vows of silence as well. A flood of unchristian thoughts went through her mind as she held her breath and moved up-wind next to Sister Clavier.
Suddenly Caleb started babbling in lingo and pointing to the sky.
‘Speak English!’ Sister Annunciata screeched, annoyed in case she was missing out on something.
They were always doing that and it gave her no end of grief. You had to be blessed with the patience of a saint to work with this damned lot. No-one could see anything yet because of the low clouds but the kids were all looking in the same direction, their ears cocked towards the sound. Sister Annunciata couldn’t see or hear a bloody thing but instinctively looked that way too. All she could see was cloud.
Although the kids displayed a frighteningly high level of deafness in the confines of the classroom, it was remarkable how acute their hearing became when they went outside. Sister had always believed this strange phenomenon pointed to the fact that the tympanic membranes in the bush mob’s ears were tuned to another frequency. Why else would they have such trouble learning the teachings of God and how to stop acting like a black person? If they had tympanic membranes like a white person they would have the ability to become rational, thinking human beings with a whole different outlook on life. Let’s face it, no-one in their right mind would want to go fishing every day, or sleeping under a shady tree while the kids played in the waterhole, or walking around in a state of undress in the tropical heat like the bush mob did. They’d want to be on their knees praying to God and learning to read so there wouldn’t be a repetition of last month’s little disaster when Leah had accidentally washed the nuns’ habits in starch instead of washing detergent causing them all a great deal of discomfort. And anyone would think the stupid woman had done it on purpose the way she kept sniggering while she was being chastised. It had taken all Sister Annunciata’s energy not to slap the brainless fool.
But hang on, something was wrong. The airstrip was that way and the sound of the approaching plane was coming this way. It took about five seconds for them to realise that it had emerged from the clouds and was heading straight towards them. Kids, including Ephraim who had been Sister Clavier’s umbrella holder, scattered in all directions while a stunned Sister Annunciata flung herself to the rain-sodden ground. Sister Clavier, her heart soaring and oblivious to the turmoil around her, threw herself to her knees and thanked the Lord for this timely deliverance. The plane roared overhead and, just skimming the church roof, neatly manoeuvred between two mango trees before disappearing from sight. There was a resounding crump and then a deafening silence.
Lazarus was the first to emerge from the bushes along with Rebecca who was smoothing down her dress and picking leaves from her hair.
‘What happened?’ asked John the Baptist, a large but dim-witted boy who had stumbled into view and was having trouble putting his pants back on.
Sara snatched them from him, turned the left leg the right way in and handed them back before adjusting her bloomers. The foursome had managed to sneak off unobserved while their class had been busily preparing the chapel for the Bishop’s visit, and while Brother Neil had his head in the sacristy under the guise of checking the vestments for tomorrow’s mass. Everyone knew he was really sneaking a look at the comics he’d confiscated from the boys’ dormitory and that Epiphany had found stashed there. Epiphany, the presbytery cleaning lady, always had lots of interesting things to tell when she went home to bush camp in the evenings, and her thoughtful family were always only too happy to sit back and listen while she got everything off her chest.
Meanwhile, the girls were all for getting back to the mission now this damned plane had disturbed them but Lazarus’s urging curiosity got the better of them and they advanced upon the grounded plane. Luckily it had done a belly landing and apart from a smashed windscreen, a few scratches and some stray branches clinging to its extremities, was looking remarkably intact. Lazarus was the first to get to the plane and peered inside a window. A man’s stunned face looked back at him, his glasses hanging sideways off his face from one ear. His lips were moving but Lazarus couldn’t work out what he was saying. The pilot was the first to surface as John the Baptist yanked the door open. As Rebecca and Sara rushed forward to help him to the ground, he immediately pulled a hip flask from his pocket and proceeded to drain the contents into his cavernous mouth. The next to stumble down the steps was the man with his glasses still hanging off his ear, his lips still moving in silent prayer.
‘Oh my God!’ exclaimed Sara. ‘It’s the Bishop!’
Sara, a sweet and charming child, had expressed her desire to become a nun, and for the past year or so was receiving extra ecclesiastical tuition in the evenings from the overjoyed Sister Benedicta. As far as Sara was concerned, her dalliances with John the Baptist and Josephus and Isaac and Ezekiel and all the rest weren’t an obstacle to her religious training at all. She kept these daily carnal activities quite separate from her spiritual ones and they did not in any way detract from her devotion to her studies. Besides, Sister Benedicta didn’t tell her what she did in her spare time, did she?
Father’s hysterical outbursts in the confessional when Sara had devoutly confessed her ‘activities’ were getting a bit unfair, however. To say nothing of the lengthy penances he imposed. But thanks to Sister Benedicta, Sara now knew that God was everywhere and willing to forgive the repentant sinner, if the sinner were to only ask nicely. You could murder or rape and pillage, do what you liked, but if you sucked up his Godliness’s arse and showed even a modicum of repentance your slate would be wiped clean. Then you could go and do it all again. As far as Sara was concerned there was really no need for Father Macredie’s confessional services; he was just the unnecessary middle-man. She had thoughtfully enlightened her friends of this canonical loophole and they were only too happy as well to spare both themselves and Father of any unnecessary anguish by also going direct to God.
Meanwhile Rebecca, a scheming but lovable scamp, had rushed to help his Most Affluent to the ground. Feeling no wallet in his unsuspecting pockets she immediately abandoned him for Sara to gush over. She turned her attentions to the next two, but they had already extricated themselves from the plane and were climbing unassisted down the steps. They warded off all offers of assistance from the kindly Rebecca and calmly proceeded to his Most Shocked, gratified at their fortuitous rescue.
Being the big strapping lads that they were, Lazarus and John the Baptist carried his Most Feeble back to the mission while the others followed in meek procession. Thankfully everybody was too flustered and grateful to ask how or why the four youngsters had been in the vicinity of the beach during school hours, and they turned their attentions to his Most Delicate who upon reaching the mission proceeded to dry retch into the rampant patch of mother-in-law’s tongue. Funnily enough they never grew after that and for years afterwards everyone remembered Noah the gardener’s prophetic declarations that it would take more than the devil to kill the bloody things.
It had been a long mass, and the fiery sermon presented by his Most Verbose a few days later would have rivalled that of Moses himself when he delivered his Sermon on the Mount.
‘Repent!’ his Most Garrulous had boomed to the congregation as he balanced on a pair of crutches with his arm in a sling. ‘Or it may be too late. Your life could end in the bl
ink of an eye and purgatory or hell fire could await you!’
The littlies in the front rows withered under his Most Fearsome’s frightful gaze while Sister Clavier melted. He was a fine specimen of a Bishop, she thought, as the congregation launched into a lusty rendition of ‘How Great Thou Art’. A very fine specimen indeed.
It had been three days now and it seemed that his Most Impatient was going to be stuck for a few more. It had been decided that a return trip by plane was totally out of the question and all four, including the pilot who between sips of whisky vowed and declared that he’d never fly again, were waiting for the next boat to arrive to take them back to the Big Joint.
Meanwhile his Most Learned had decided to spend his time constructively and was participating in Sister de Pores’ religious instruction class.
‘But why did Eve eat the apple? Wouldn’t the snake have tasted better?’ queried Jeremiah.
‘And why aren’t there any black angels? Why are they always white?’ asked another.
‘And if God made the world, then who made God?’
‘And why is his name dog backwards?’
His Most Anxious, head spinning from this onslaught, looked to Sister for assistance. But Sister, harbouring a long-held contempt for his Most Sleazy and having borne the brunt of similar questioning herself, continued to clean up her desk and ignored him.
‘Er, well, the snake might have been poisonous,’ he proffered.
‘Poison snakes don’t climb trees!’ Ruth flung back amid murmurs of assent from the rest of the class.
‘Well how do you know that it lived in a tree?’
‘Look here,’ said Cecilia, showing him their text with a beautifully illustrated depiction of Adam and Eve being shamefully ousted from the Garden of Eden while the snake leered at their retreating backs from a nearby bush. He could see the normally sullen-faced Sister de Pores smirking to herself as he squirmed under the scrutiny of these budding heretics. He could feel a big migraine coming on.
Every Secret Thing Page 1