Every Secret Thing

by Marie Munkara

  ‘In her bedroom.’

  ‘Why can’t she live here?’

  ‘Because she keeps chasing people.’

  Chasing people? How very odd. Fleeting images of a woman running after startled passers-by flitted through Marigold’s brain.

  ‘Can’t they tell her to stop it?’

  ‘She won’t listen to them.’

  ‘Who said she had to go?’

  ‘The mission mob.’

  ‘Oh, okay.’

  Marigold was still a bit confused but decided to leave the questioning there before being lost completely.

  Rebecca suddenly cranked up the wailing and, racing up to the front door with Lazarus hot on her heels, flung herself on an enormous black pig wearing a blue scarf that was emerging from the house.

  ‘Angel,’ she wailed. ‘Angel.’

  In disbelief Marigold sidled over to Judy who, judging by the tears of anguish streaming down her face, was well-acquainted with Angel’s predicament.

  ‘Is that Angel?’ she asked, knowing already what the answer would be.

  Judy ignored her daughter’s stupid question and, beating herself on her head with her bag, joined in the wailing with all her might.

  Thinking she might have missed something, Marigold ran the scenario through her mind. So, it seems that everyone is upset over a pig that likes to chase people and the mission mob has told the family of the pig that it has to be removed from the household. She ran it through her mind again, trying to find flaws in the logic of the situation, but failed.

  ‘It’s only a pig. Why is everyone carrying on like this?’ she whispered to Judy.

  The silence was deafening as everyone paused in their self-flagellation and wailing and looked at Marigold like she’d just squatted down and shat on the grass in front of them. Without saying a word, Judy turned Marigold around and pointed her in the direction of home.

  And so the months passed and Judy slowly taught Marigold some of the ways of the bush mob. Like how to light a fire without singeing her eyebrows, or how to cut sugarbag out of the tree without destroying the entire nest. And to her credit Marigold wasn’t making so many mistakes now, such as hooking people up on her fishing line when she tried to throw it, or making a damper that nearly broke your jaw when you bit into it. With these inspiring improvements in mind, Judy decided that her daughter was ready to hunt mud crabs in the mangroves and Marigold, dizzy with excitement, was only too happy to comply. But no-one, including Marigold’s aunty Sarah and aunty Ruth, had any thought of telling the poor woman what it was really like, did they? Oh no, they’d just let her find out for herself.

  Poor Marigold, caked from arsehole to breakfast in black, stinking mangrove mud, with every inch of exposed skin chewed by insects, had decided after an hour or so of torture that she’d had enough. But there was no point her wasting her breath and complaining about it. Judy hadn’t been nicknamed Rakuma* for nothing. She was in her element in the mangroves and had no intention of leaving until she was ready.

  *Mosquito

  Marigold watched Judy skim deftly through the mire while she grumpily wallowed behind enveloped in a buzzing black cloud of sandflies and mosquitoes. Over to the left, Sarah’s ample arse manoeuvred with the grace of a ballet dancer through the tangle of mangrove roots to the jubilant Ruth who had just dispatched another crab. Weird bird calls and the strange pop-popping bubbling of the mud were beginning to unnerve Marigold. She looked over her shoulder yet again, feeling the prickling sensation of something watching her. Pushing the thoughts from her mind, Marigold focused instead on gliding through the mud like Judy. She sunk hopelessly deeper instead.

  Spotting Judy’s purple dress Marigold headed towards it until at length she reached her mother nonchalantly leaning against a tree, smoking her crab claw pipe.

  ‘Look there, kurumpuka†, you grab it,’ Judy commanded her daughter.

  †crab

  With a hip-displacing jerk Marigold yanked her legs out of the knee-deep mud and lurched over to where Judy had indicated. But no matter how hard she tried she could only see mud.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘There!’

  ‘But where is there?’ Marigold hissed. ‘Oh, there.’

  ‘No, not there. There!’

  With the crab finally located nestling at the base of a tree, Marigold closed in for the kill the way Judy had shown her. But for some reason she couldn’t bring herself to do it. The crustacean waved its claws at her in the most congenial manner. How could she possibly kill it? Its little mouth opened and closed like it was trying to say something. Squatting down for a closer look Marigold poked it. Big mistake. Marigold could only watch in astonishment as it neatly latched onto her extended finger.

  It took a few seconds for the pain to register and for Marigold’s reflexes to respond to the white-hot pain searing through her unfortunate digit. Strangled expletives erupted from her throat as she smashed her attacker against the tree trunk. A branch broke and tumbled into the mud but the crab’s grip on her finger didn’t ease up. It just squeezed tighter. Marigold whacked it against the tree a few more times but the crab had absolutely no intention of letting go. By now her expletives had turned into a glass-shattering scream, alerting Sarah and Ruth where they stood beside Judy watching the spectacle with wide-eyed fascination.

  ‘Fucking do something,’ Marigold managed to gargle before resuming her scream.

  Her aunties looked at each other and started to laugh. And this was no ordinary laugh – they were holding their sides and hanging onto the trees for support. They had tears running down their faces. They were doubled over and gasping for air. Somewhere in all the pain Marigold’s survival instincts took over. She lunged forward and snatched the tomahawk from Judy’s hand.

  Considering Sarah’s girth and Judy’s gammy leg they backed away with astonishing speed, their laughs frozen on their faces. Buckets and crabs fell from their clutches while Marigold brandished the axe. She had a look in her eyes like they had never seen before. They turned, looked over their shoulders once more, and ran. Leaning the crab against the tree Marigold smashed it with the tomahawk with all her might, and it was only after being implanted halfway into the tree and ground to an unrecognisable pulp that the bastard finally let go.

  With her finger throbbing like hell and her arm aching from the frenzied hacking Marigold followed the footsteps until she found her way out of the mangroves and headed for home, only to find the three of them sitting under the mango tree, drinking tea and acting like nothing had happened. And it was in the shower, washing off the mud and the hurt, Marigold realised that she didn’t want to be among these people anymore. She didn’t want to be different or alone or laughed at. She didn’t want to be awkward or out of place. But she didn’t understand that the time between when the child Tapalinga had left and the stranger named Marigold had returned had been too long for her mother and other people to bear.

  The pain of losing her had solidified and turned into a mountain of indifference. Marigold’s coming back had threatened to open a door to the past that had taken Judy all her energy to close. She had only weakened once because she had needed to say goodbye. She had taken one last look at her beautiful baby daughter before turning away and moving on. She could never go back there again and the only way she could protect herself from Marigold was to keep a distance between them.

  As a product of the bush mob and the mission mob Marigold’s place was with neither of them and it was with a heavy heart that she watched her dreams of a life with her family disappear. She had only wanted to love them and to feel herself beloved in return.

  The Movies

  There were tears from the bush mob when Father Macredie left. Retirement had been on the cards for a while now so it was no surprise to anyone including the bush mob who were always the last to know anything. Despite his questio
nable religious ideals they had seen the person that lived inside his soul and once all the crap was stripped away they’d really liked him. But poor Father Macredie only felt a deep sadness in his soul as he looked into their faces for the last time and boarded the plane for another world because it was only then that he realised things could have been different if only he’d let the bush mob into his heart from the beginning and been their friend.

  And so began another era in the life of the bush mob. It was called the age of destruction and they had Father Voleur to thank for that. Father Voleur was a grumpy bastard and he made damn sure that everybody knew it. As the youngest son of a large family that had already sacrificed three of its best including a sister who had joined the Sisters of Mercy, it was expected that young James would take up the cloth as well. He accepted this fate with the same resignation that a camel accepts the burdens that are placed upon its back and then when it stumbles, too old to be of use, ends up in the cooking pot.

  James’s earliest memories were of sitting on his mother’s lap in church, listening to the priest reading the Gospel while he watched his brother faint onto the pew beside him before clattering noisily to the floor. Then came his stint as an altar boy, prepubescent training for the priesthood and something not unlike the experience of child soldiers in the Congo who were also trained to coerce and subjugate the unwilling, the unwitting and the unwary. For young James primary school soon became boarding school where he and the other altar boys continued to hang out together like a band of persecuted Christians. Not because they liked each other of course but because nobody else liked the suck-arse altar boys who were considered to be in a league of their own and their own sorry company was better than no company at all. And while the school bullies shoved them and spat on them and sniggered about tits (he was fifteen before he realised they weren’t talking about birds) James began to torture himself with the thought that maybe he wasn’t cut out for the priesthood.

  But how wrong can a person be? In return for his diligence and devotion, James had a meteoric rise through the ecclesiastical ranks and was rewarded after serving the church for twenty years with being placed in charge of the mission after the departure of Father Macredie. And didn’t he have a few surprises up his well-turned sleeve when he arrived, including a reel-to-reel film projector and a heap of old westerns which he insisted was for the quiet enjoyment of the mission mob when they had spare time from indoctrinating the bush mob, but in reality was for himself.

  As a pimply teenager the movies had always been more than an escape from the harsh realities of his austere existence. They had been the dreams that he was forbidden to dream, the passion that he was destined to never share with another human being. For a few short hours he could dream and share the passion. At a distance, mind you, and yes, there had been a bit of an inner struggle along the way. Watching movies wasn’t exactly what you’d consider being next to godliness but you can justify anything if you try hard enough.

  And so it came to be that many a pleasant Friday night was spent by the mission mob with Sister Jerome’s fruit cake and a cup of tea served at intermission. But there’s always one who’ll whinge because the chocolate mousse isn’t chocolatey enough or the poulet a la Provencale doesn’t have enough garlic in it. Once again Sister Clavier just couldn’t help herself.

  Now the mission mob all understood quite well that selfishness was not a particularly becoming trait for religious personages such as they. But did Sister Clavier have to start having twinges of guilt about the good times the mission mob were having while the bush mob were patiently waiting for the second coming? Did she really have to put it to Father that maybe the mission mob and the bush mob could all watch the movies together?

  ‘Those hopeless sinners are living under our guidance so they can learn to atone for an eternity of pagan practices and wrongdoings, not be rewarded for it!’ Father had frowned.

  He was still smarting from Isaac’s insolence that morning when he’d told Father that his newborn son was to be called Gordon and not Gabriel. How dare the man! Not that that was going to stop the mission mob from calling the kid by his rightful mission name of course.

  ‘I don’t think it’s such a bad idea. They might even learn something,’ threw in Brother Wayne.

  It was now getting to be a quite heated discussion over their plum duff and custard. This suggestion had put quite another slant on things. Brother Wayne was the resident expert on the way the black mob thought and behaved because his uncle Barnaby had been in charge of the primates at the London zoo before he passed away. So it stood to reason that Brother Wayne would know a thing or two about their bush mob cousins. With that fortifying thought in mind it was decided that a movie night for both the mission mob and the bush mob would be held once a month in the grounds of the mission, with a sheet hanging from two mango trees as the screen.

  And didn’t the bush mob give the mission mob something to laugh about! Their jaws dropped in astonishment watching John Wayne gallop across the screen in the pursuit of good and justice and the American way. How on earth did all those flat people fit inside that box they wondered. And how on earth did they get out? It was more than any of them could comprehend. How come we haven’t seen this Indian mob before? Maybe they were from Alice Springs or something. And where were their spears? A few well-aimed spears would have sent the cavalry packing. Didn’t they know how to make spears? Why were the Indians always running away? And why did Sister keep putting her annoying hand over the front of the projector every time John Wayne made a move on the love interest?

  The mission mob, never backward when it came to exploitation, came to realise very quickly that the bush mob’s fascination for the movies could be used as a very powerful weapon against the poor bastards.

  ‘I know that there are some people missing from church today,’ Father Voleur boomed, ‘so there’ll be no movies on Friday.’

  And yes, Father Voleur was right. Not everybody was at church at all. But if they’d known he was going to arc up about it they could have propped Martin (who had been dead for two days and probably nicely bloated by now) up in the corner. And I’m sure Gerarda wouldn’t have minded having her baby in the aisle although Lot, who was suffering from a particularly virulent case of diarrhoea, probably would have had to sit on a bucket at the back in case of any accidents because not even God himself had the power to stem the putrid tide when it decided to flow. Just ask his wife who had to keep washing his soiled trousers, all the while soundly cursing the mission mob for making them wear clothes. But the bush mob didn’t know they were going to be bribed like a bunch of disobedient kids. They just sat and fumed while Father Voleur ranted and raved about how much God loved his sooty brethren, even the naughty and ungrateful ones.

  ‘If he loves us that much why can’t he let us go to the movies?’ they grumbled. ‘And then he can strike us down with lightning afterwards.’

  Despite Father Voleur’s proclivity to be selective about the favours he bestowed on his intractable flock they tried very hard to please him because there was something in these movies that had captured everyone’s interest and they wanted to find out more. They wanted to know how people could die in one movie and be alive in the next. How did that work? Were they from the same tribe as the son of God who the mission mob said could die and then rise from the dead? Was it a trick that only murantani could perform? Or could they learn to do it too?

  ‘I’ll see if I can find out,’ Pwomiga (who was now called Joseph) volunteered to the group who had gathered at his house the next day to talk about this strange thing.

  Now if anyone was going to sort this out it would be Pwomiga. They were very fortunate indeed to have one as clever as he in their midst. And so a week later, after his favourite bitch had finally whelped and the moon was in its second quarter and the bush plums were ripening nicely, Pwomiga headed off into the bush with Kumwarrni and Jerrengkerritirti (Fran
ces and Paul to the mission mob) to unravel the mystery of dying and then rising from the dead.

  Their first stop was the white ochre pits where they ground the soft rock into enough powder to coat Pwomiga’s entire body because Pwomiga had reasoned that if only murantani could perform this amazing feat then he would have to make sure he looked just like one of them. On they went until they came to the place behind the sand hills that had always been a favourite fishing spot when they were boys, and where the tapirtapunga seeds were found in abundance. One was enough to kill a grown man so Pwomiga found two nice big ones and sat them on a piece of bark while Kumwarrni prepared a fire for the fat barramundi that they’d caught on the way. It was important that Pwomiga have a last supper too even though he only had two apostles with him.

  ‘But if God can see into your soul like the mission mob say he can then he’ll know that you’re really black,’ said Jerrengkerritirti who wasn’t entirely convinced that the plan would work.

  Jerrengkerritirti had always been the careful one. But Pwomiga smiled and continued to munch on his barramundi, savouring the taste and the texture of the succulent fish. He looked at the brilliant blue ocean and the beach where he’d played and where love had been found and made and where he’d watched the stars move across the night sky. And he looked at his two Brothers – Kumwarrni, his face calm as always but lined with age now; and Jerrengkerritirti, his face scrunched with worry and his teeth that had always looked like they were trying to climb out of his mouth. And he smiled again because he knew that whatever the outcome of this bizarre experiment nothing was ever going to be the same for the bush mob again.

  After Pwomiga had cracked the outer husk of the two seeds to ensure they didn’t pass harmlessly through his body and he’d swallowed them and his convulsions had died down, his spirit quietly left his body under the watchful silence of his Brothers who dared not look at each other in case the fear and sadness they felt in their hearts would pass from their eyes into the other Brother and turn it into a deep pain that would cut them both. Kumwarrni and Jerrengkerritirti waited for two days as they’d been instructed. And while they waited they thought about things, lots of things. They watched the stars move across the night sky, hoping that Pwomiga might be up there talking to God like he said he was going to, but knowing deep down that he was really gone and he wasn’t coming back.