The Crying Place

by Lia Hills

  ‘My car broke down,’ I said, ‘about twenty k’s out. Timing belt. Bit of a weak point in that model. Thought I was going to have to spend the night out there, but these guys picked me up in a white ute. Lucky they came along. Wasn’t looking forward to walking all the way, and I was starting to get a bit spooked out there. The desert oak, that sound it makes …’

  She nodded as if already aware of the details. Her hand brushed crumbs from her skirt, shed some of the grass that still clung to it.

  ‘I told them I knew you so they dropped me here just after nine. Your neighbour gave me a cup of tea.’

  ‘Sister.’

  ‘Sister? That makes sense. They said it was okay for me to sleep on the verandah.’

  Nara raised her eyebrows. I wanted badly to know where she’d been, what she’d been doing, but she hadn’t asked me a single question and I felt I should follow her lead. She threw the remains of her tea into the yard. It formed a dirty arc that landed with a thud in the sand. The magpie lark, still watching, hopped away.

  ‘I have things to do,’ she said.

  She looked towards the ranges, their flanks dulled by the rising heat, but the way her hands had settled into her pockets suggested that only her mind was going there. Her jaw tensed, the squareness of it reminding me of a photo – one I’d known since I was a kid. The association made me flinch.

  ‘Will you be long?’ I asked her.

  ‘No.’

  Her jaw relaxed, rounded out, but I couldn’t loosen the hold of that image. The first time I saw it would’ve been in primary school, some local history project. Then later, in that textbook we used in high school, Their Ghosts May Be Heard, or some documentary or handout our teacher gave us, one among the many resources that were meant to give us a sense of who we were. A black-and-white photo of Truganini, ‘the last Tasmanian Aborigine’ – a collar of maireener shells around her dark neck, the look on her face halfway between defiant and confused. And beneath it all, somehow imbibed in the pixels, words that were rarely said out loud but that lay like humus, a rotting silence, across the whole island.

  We got rid of ’em.

  Nara rubbed sleep dust out of the corner of her eye, crusty white, a detail coming back to me – that Truganini’s name meant ‘saltbush’.

  ‘I’ll wait for you,’ I said.

  She held the keys up and slid them under the corner of the mattress. Then she headed for the gate, thongs slapping against her hardened heels.

  55

  I waited an hour but she didn’t come back, though her blankets, still on the bed, guaranteed her return. The afternoon stretched into the heat, a magpie holding its wings away from its body, its mouth ajar. I felt myself drifting off, the telepathy in Voss –characters reading each other across great tracts of land – too sapping a thought. What I needed was to get moving, stillness a precursor to doubt. I fished the keys out from under the mattress and locked the door. Returned them to their cache, the concrete littered with crumbs of foam.

  The shop was closed, nobody about except for a few mangy mongrels sniffing each other’s butts. Mad dogs and Englishmen. I reached the perimeter of town and kept going, a mess of tyre tracks in the sand. All the pedestrian prints, regular as herringbone, looked like they belonged to insects. With a clear view, the ranges appeared further away than I’d first calculated. Plus, they looked like they required permission, a gap running between two steep ridges suggesting water.

  Another time.

  Instead I headed for the tallest dune.

  The sand was ochre-red, only the white glint of silica breaching the uniformity of its surface. I planted myself cross-legged on the crest. Took a decent swig from the bottle I’d brought with me, a spindly mulga giving more the idea of shade than the real thing. Below the wind wished through the clumps of spinifex as if there was something lustful about their relationship. Trails led across the sand, small Vs, a long thin one that could’ve been a snake. My own prints looked chaotic.

  So what if Nara had reminded me of a picture kids had taken the piss out of all those years ago? It had been a friend of mine called Nate who’d whispered that Truganini was proof of the missing link, his adolescent desire for acceptance fleshed out with a little pseudoscience and a fistful of home-grown prejudice. Jed had been there too, scratching under his armpits and pouting like a chimpanzee, and we’d all laughed – of course we had. Proof of what? That we were capable of shitful things? That we defined ourselves as much as anybody by what we believed we were not?

  I drew a circle around a stick bleached and knobbly as finger bones. Plunged my hand into the warm sand, let the grains sift through it, a moment of grace. I could see a long way from the vantage point of the crest. The ranges stoic. The desert oak verging on forest in places. Ininyingi, its cross of bitumen like an airstrip, though vaguely religious, as if marking a sacrifice. And of course there were the birds, two finches chasing each other through a tangle of branches.

  Finches: a sign that water was close, according to Alec.

  It was one of the first things you learnt in any desert: how to lessen your chances of dying of thirst. Jed and I’d collected techniques with the zeal of Boy Scouts, from guidebooks, around campfires, from locals whose knowledge had crystallised over centuries. How to wrap a desert plant in a plastic bag and capture its moisture. Or dig a hole in the sand and lay a sheet of plastic across it, make a dip in the middle with a hole cut out, a container placed below to catch dew, if there was any. The true story of a blind Tuareg navigating his way to old wells by smell alone. And one of Jed’s favourites, though he took it to be more folkloric than real: tie a baboon to a tree and force-feed it salt until it’s so thirsty that, once released, the poor bastard leads you straight to water.

  They did the same thing to the Noongar of Western Australia. Bound them in neck chains and fed them salt beef till their thirst outstripped their observance of Law, one explorer using this method to locate the waterholes that would be his saving link across what he saw as uncharted desert.

  That one Jed never mentioned.

  Maybe he never knew.

  Maybe some forms of knowledge take away more than they give.

  56

  When I got back to Nara’s there was a fire going in the front yard. Beside it were a black plastic bag and the remnants of what looked like a book amid the flames.

  A warped spine.

  A stub of dwindling pages.

  The ground around it had been swept, and so had the sand in front of the verandah; a branch of dried gum leaves leant against the wall of the house. Nara was nowhere to be seen, but I could hear voices inside. Women’s voices. Two sticks were propped outside the door.

  The sun had long quit the concrete slab, but there was still at least an hour left to the day, the red towards the horizon more dust than atmospheric layering. I felt myself settled by the science of it, despite the presence of burning books.

  I squatted, stirred the pages with a stick, but it was already too late to make out the book’s title. Beside it, a plastic button had melted to the point where the holes were only hollows. Something exploded, a pocket of trapped air most likely. I jumped anyway.

  Standing on the verandah was a child, eyes big, a look that verged on sass. Nara came out and stood beside the kid, who couldn’t have been more than two or three.

  ‘This is Roopie,’ she said.

  ‘Ruby?’

  ‘Roopie. My son.’

  The kid swung his arms as if swimming through air, a spray of curls framing his head. Nara gestured for me to follow them inside. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the lack of light, the sheet still covering the window.

  Three old women stood side by side. They wore long full skirts and bright floral tops. Two were barefoot, their ankles so thin they seemed inadequate to the task of holding up a human being.

  ‘Palya,’ I said under my breath, sure of the word but not my place in this roomful of women.

  ‘Palya,’ they replied.
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br />   Roopie grabbed the hand of the lady wearing loafers and tried swinging off her curled fingers, but she shooed him away with a flick of her wrist. Nara waved him over, pulled him into her hip.

  Standing in the centre of the three women was the eldest. Even though her short hair was less flecked with white, there was something about the way they stood there, the way the others were positioned around her, that convinced me of this. A large woman, she ambled towards me, navigated from the hips. Reached out and took my hand. Her breath labouring in her chest, she held my hand there for a moment, balanced in her palm, her skin the texture of rice paper. Then she released it and walked away.

  I went to say something, but even if I’d had the language I doubt I would’ve found the words.

  Next, the woman in loafers approached me. She was tiny, the straightness of her back at odds with her apparent age, the waistband of her purple skirt pulled halfway up her ribs. Her wrists as precarious as her ankles, she took my hand in hers, looked up at me, the rims of her eyes loose, as if the act of seeing had once been more expansive. She held on a little longer than the last woman had before letting go, her shoes sucking at her heels.

  Then the third, her shoulders broader, the skin of her arms loose, and there was no longer any question that some kind of ritual was being enacted. Like the others, she smelt of smoke, her skin so black it was almost blue. She nodded once, twice, mumbling as her eyes shifted to my throat.

  Standing beside me now, Nara placed her palm on Roopie’s head.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

  ‘They’re saying sorry.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The woman’s hands were so arid it was like sand being poured over my skin, and I thought of an hourglass, of falling, of what might be measured by contact. Then she too withdrew, a nail tracking the inside of my finger.

  I moved away from the door and further into the room, allowing the light to restate its edges. Sensed it again: shifting geometry. Nara spoke to the women but I didn’t understand – neither her explanations nor their replies, his name never mentioned because of the taboo. But the substance of their conversation was clear.

  Nara turned to me, her face on the brink of collapse. If she cried I was done for. Not here, not now.

  And then the old ladies were leaving, their hands raised as they walked towards the square of light.

  The two barefoot women collected the sticks leaning against the doorframe, the sway of their bodies focused around their placement in the sand. As they crossed the front yard, they left a line of dots in their wake. The fire snapped at their heels, its flames dulled by daylight. By the gate, a dog waited for them, its tongue a floppy muscle.

  I stood in the doorway, Nara behind me, close enough to hear her breathe.

  ‘They know?’

  ‘Everybody knows,’ she said.

  57

  Night fallen, the only light was coming from the TV, some show in which the worlds of fairy tale and reality had become inextricably tangled. But I couldn’t focus on it, its constant allusions and pop-culture referencing in American accents. Nara had changed into a red hoodie and a long black skirt, but she still wore the same beanie, its hem pulled down over her forehead. Her hand was restless on the remote. She smelt of bacon fat and detergent. After the women had left she’d spent a long time in her bedroom, while Roopie had watched cartoons and I’d cooked dinner. May – Nara’s great-aunt and the eldest of the three women – had come back and eaten with us, chewing for ages on the rind Roopie had discarded. She was asleep now in the room at the end of the hall, her snores audible in the slow scenes. Roopie lay with his head in Nara’s lap, an arm flung across her leg, his feet pressed against my thigh. He farted and rolled towards the back of the couch, Nara pulling a blanket around him.

  An ad for large machinery came on, a guy in khaki shorts shouting the virtues of some outlet in Alice with a best-mates tone of voice. It was followed by one about community health, most of the faces black.

  ‘Where were you?’ I asked her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where did you go? After I called?’

  ‘Out there.’

  She pointed to the wall behind the TV, which I calculated as west. Placed her hand across her son’s forehead as if checking his temperature.

  The program came back on, a woman in a power suit some post-modern incarnation of the wicked witch, her beauty merely heightened by evil. Roopie shuddered, his breathing lending a rhythm to everything.

  ‘Where out there?’

  ‘Past the oval.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Sorry camp,’ she said, pulling the beanie over her eyebrows.

  ‘Sorry camp?’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘By yourself?’

  She shook her head, focused on the screen. I let it go. But I had more questions, always questions, as if they were my only line of defence. How does it work? And, Could I have come with you?

  I tried to imagine the place, out there among the blenched spinifex and the desert oak and the red folds of the dunes. A place you could reach on foot, barefoot, with an armful of blankets. In the shade of a mulga with only birds for company – a mocking bowerbird – or the moon once night came, its familiar alien face.

  But she had not been alone – that much she’d made clear. From what I’d heard, Aboriginal people were usually accompanied in their grief.

  Roopie jerked in his sleep, clutched at me with his toes. I covered his foot with my hand. He flinched but left it there.

  Jed must’ve sat here too, on this couch, watched junk TV, the child between them, like a conduit. Cleaned saucepans. Slept beneath this roof. Listened. Observed. And, with time, felt less like a foreigner. An intruder.

  ‘He lived here?’ I asked. ‘With you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For how long?’

  She pouted as if calculating with her mouth. ‘More than one year.’

  ‘And then he left?’

  Nara nodded. Stroked her son’s head, her finger opposing a cowlick in regular swirls, the skin of her knuckles even darker in the creases. Those hands, the child, this cross of bitumen surrounded by desert. How did his death belong to this?

  The wicked witch smiled into a mirror and smoothed the first hint of a line.

  With a flick Nara killed the TV. Scooped Roopie into her arms, his legs bare and dangling. But as she jostled his weight, she stumbled, her body folding around the boy. I steadied her, my hand at her elbow, and she let me, the only light coming from outside, from a gap where the sheet didn’t quite meet the edge of the window.

  ‘Will you go back there?’ I asked. ‘Out past the oval?’

  ‘Finished now,’ she said.

  58

  This time I woke to the thud-thud of galloping on bitumen – wild horses, or camels maybe – rhythmic, noble, all of it muffled by four walls. Something with blade suspension moved down the street, a bird doing a fresh impersonation of a reversing truck, and the dogs, the dogs, their wailful oration. I reached for my bottle but found a glass. Empty. Must’ve dreamt of being thirsty, or been thirsty. I needed to piss. It was all about transference.

  I fumbled for my watch, not quite seven, the sun just a grey streak between the sheet and the bricks.

  Behind the door to the hall, there was a shuffling. The handle turned. Hesitated. Completed its circle.

  Standing there was Roopie, a Spiderman t-shirt down to his knees, folds corrugating superhero biceps. He rubbed an eye with his fist, one of his nostrils caked shut. Wobbled over and plonked himself at my feet. While he waited for me to do something, he picked at the snot with a grubby nail.

  I hauled on my jacket against the chill.

  ‘You hungry?’

  ‘Hungry,’ he replied, though it was unclear whether for food or repetition.

  He edged along the mattress till he was sitting beside me. Spying a hole in the elbow of my jacket, he poked a finger in it as if scouting for t
reasure.

  ‘Oi, you’ll make it worse.’

  ‘Hung-gry,’ he insisted.

  Then he jumped on me before I had time to brace myself. Wrenched my shoulder back as he rolled over the top of me and landed on the mattress, pounded the base of my spine with his feet for all he was worth.

  ‘Hey, cut it out.’

  ‘Hey, hey, hey.’

  I flipped over and grabbed his legs, his thighs small but strong between my hands. But he didn’t quit kicking, not until I whipped him over and held him tight in my arms.

  ‘You little bugger.’

  ‘Bugger,’ he piped, the tension sliding out of his body.

  His hair smelt like sheep.

  Slowly, I let him go.

  Freed, he spun around to face me, Spiderman’s masked eyes leering from his chest. Gripping the bridge of his nose, he pulled along its ridge till he reached its end, as if trying to extract a thought.

  And before I knew it, I was calculating at a hundred miles an hour. The hazel of his eyes. The dimple in his chin. A light patch below his cheekbone. And there: he was doing it again – pinching his nose along the ridge of cartilage, drawing on it.

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Je-sus,’ he parroted and tugged at my sleeve.

  ‘Come on, then. Let’s get you something to eat.’

  ‘Come-on-come-on-come-on.’

  He followed me to the kitchen, his shoulders agitating like a washing machine. One of his arms connected with the doorframe, but he was a study in stoicism, barely flinched.

  The sourdough was gone but there were the remnants of a packet of sliced wholemeal, the peanut butter still half full. Someone had scooped it out with a teaspoon going by the measured grooves. I checked the cupboards for a toaster, but there was nothing much: some steel wool, the saucepans I’d used the night before, a plastic bowl, a grater with a frill of rust. A lone teabag.

  ‘Sorry, mate, it’ll have to be sandwiches.’