by Lia Hills
‘I’ve seen it done,’ he said, taking a long swig. ‘When somebody’s grieving, sometimes a ngangkari will place the spirit of the deceased in their body for them to hold. The spirit can get lost in country if it’s not taken care of, cause trouble.’
‘You really believe that?’
‘I’ve seen things that made so little sense at the time that I wondered if I’d ever had any in the first place.’
Thaddeus picked at the yellow label on the bottle.
‘A few years back,’ he said, ‘I started having this dream. The kind that settles in, takes hold of daylight even. You ever experience that, Saul?’
‘Sure.’
‘It would start differently each time but always end in the same place: on a gibber plain, not a tree in sight, godforsaken territory – the kind of wasteland where thirst would be a comfort because it would remind you that you were still human. These willy-willies would rise up out of cracks in the ground, spin round and round, each one the height of a man. And as I’d watch them they’d narrow and take shape, like a vase being moulded between a potter’s hands –’ Thaddeus mimicked the motion ‘– till they became men. But not just men – women and children too, all of them silent, all of them hunched forwards. And everyone one of them had this look in their eyes. So hollow you’d fear you’d fall into it, never to return.’
‘Jesus. Sounds more like a nightmare than a dream.’
‘The worst bit was, they knew my name. And they’d use it, call me over and over again. Except the th would always be replaced with a j. Jadeus, Jadeus.’
‘Shit.’
‘Shit indeed.’
‘So, how did you make the dream go away?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘It just stopped of its own accord?’
‘No.’
He placed both hands on the table, palms down.
‘Thaddeus?’
‘It didn’t stop,’ he said.
‘Then what?’
‘It’s just no longer confined to the night.’
75
They came, first the women and then the men, kids carried on hips or bolting through the gate. Beanies tugged over ears. Hoodies raised against the descending cold. A few brought bits of firewood, Nara’s brother-in-law, Gus, throwing some over the fence before taking the long way round, the bottom of his jeans so long and frayed they brushed away his tracks. Inti limped in, leaning on her stick, a young girl in tow carrying something heavy wrapped in a blanket that turned out to be an enamel casserole dish. She placed it directly onto the coals beside a cache of buried kangaroo tails, their discarded plastic wrappers shrunk to shiny globules by the flames.
Nara, when she’d finally emerged from her room, hadn’t mentioned a gathering, though she’d asked me to go to the store and buy bread. There I’d found Errol in a mood fierce enough to rival his swashbuckling namesake, something to do with those flaming interventionist bastards. When I’d returned with enough white loaves to mortar a house, Nara had been sitting on the edge of the verandah, exactly where I’d left her, Roopie swinging off her like she was a playground gym.
And now she was cross-legged in the sand before the fire, her face rendered geometrical, blocks of black and deep orange, the dividing line drifting with the traffic of the flames. She noticed me looking at her. Flashed a smile.
Buoyed, I moved across to where she was sitting, the sand cold against my jeans.
‘You okay?’ I asked her.
She nodded.
I dragged a tissue out of the pocket of my jeans and wiped my nose. That cold had set in soon after I’d left Thaddeus’ place.
The temperature veering towards freezing point, I edged closer to the fire, remembering the snap of flames as they’d leapt from the smashed driver’s window, the way they’d looked to be making their escape. A little girl, maybe six or seven, was sitting close to the fire on the other side, mesmerised, pink fleece zipped to her throat. Her face lit red, she looked more flame than flesh.
‘Who’s that?’ I asked.
‘Arabella.’
‘I’ve never seen her before.’
‘She’s my father’s brother’s granddaughter.’
‘Which makes her sort of your niece?’ I asked, making the calculation.
‘Uwa. Quiet one.’
The girl tucked her legs into her chest, her bare feet exposed.
‘She looks sad,’ I said.
‘Not sad. Outside.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She had a dog called Squeaky. Her and that dog went everywhere and it took care of her.’
‘Good name, Squeaky.’
Nara grinned. ‘When it yawned,’ she said, ‘it made a noise like a car door being opened.’
Arabella kept her eyes on the flames. She was far enough away not to hear us. Nara drew with a stick in the sand.
‘She was always going off with Squeaky, not telling anyone where she was going. Drove her mum crazy. One time they walked as far as the gap where there are those big river gums. It was a hot day so maybe she fell asleep under the tree with that little dog Squeaky next to her. People were looking for her, but nobody thought about the gap because it’s a long walk for a little girl.’
Poking out the bottom of her fleece, Arabella’s feet looked small but older than the rest of her.
‘We hadn’t seen rain for a long time,’ she said, ‘and there was none that day, not here. But it rained out there.’ She waved a hand in the direction of the ranges, twice, indicating distance. Something exploded in the fire. The child flinched but remained silent.
‘The river,’ I said, like a kid who’s just picked up on the plotline.
‘Uwa. It came through the gap, little bit at first, then fast. There was so much water that the road got blocked. And then it was raining here and her mother remembered how much Arabella liked those old river gums and she got really scared. When they found her, her dress was gone and she was lying with her face in the sand. Squeaky was gone too. She didn’t say what happened. She never said.’
The girl screwed up her nose, and I imagined it, the water creeping downhill across the thirsty sand – absorbed at first but gradually spreading and gaining force – becoming a thread, a creek, a river split by the giant red gums, re-forming in their wake. And the girl and her dog woken by the water already collecting around them, leaves and other debris swirling on its dirty surface, whatever else it had amassed along the way. The dog barking to fend it off, trying to drag the girl to safety across the torrent that it had become in mere minutes. Not a cloud in sight when they’d fallen asleep. No warning of what was to come.
‘But she survived,’ I said, the girl half lit, half in shadow, but real enough.
‘She loves the rain.’
‘That doesn’t make sense.’
‘Doesn’t it?’
Nara slipped her beanie off and laid it in her lap. Shivered at the surge of cold over her head. Gave it a scratch. Her fingers were so long and thin they reminded me of a temple dancer I once saw in Kerala, each gesture a pause in the story or a password. I could’ve touched the hand resting on her knee, most eyes focused on the flames or the other kids who cavorted in and out of the perimeter of light.
‘Uwa,’ I said.
She pulled the beanie back on, the moment passed.
Gus was dragging the roo tails from the ashes, coals flaring as they were exposed to the air. The tails were wrapped in tinfoil, a lot of commentary accompanying their unveiling, six of them in total, and potatoes too, their skins charred. Gus did the rounds, the tail cut into joints and dark against the foil that trapped every bit of light. He offered me the tray and I took a piece, Gus grinning like he’d just won a bet. The meat smelt smoky, gamey, the animal’s most muscular limb – its rudder – the one that had propelled it thudding across the desert.
‘Wipu,’ he said with a grin.
‘Wipu,’ I repeated, storing the word for later, though it was one with a limited radius.
Nara took a piece, gnawed on it like it was a corn cob, fat glistening on her chin.
She didn’t return to whatever mood had brought out that story, and later retreated to her room before all the visitors had gone. I stayed up, the lounge room the main thoroughfare to the toilet and the kitchen, Roopie outlasting most of them till he finally caved in May’s lap. I carried him for her, lowered him onto the bed where she slept in the second bedroom, a mattress on the bare concrete floor. Others were piled up against the wall, maybe six or seven. Obviously the place got a lot fuller than it was now.
‘Palya,’ she said.
Ushering me out, she closed the door.
The corridor was dark, except for a scrap of moonlight coming from the bathroom. The next room along was Nara’s, grubby handprints on the worn paint job of the door, their size telltale. I’d never seen inside it, the door always shut. I listened, heard her breathing, heavy but uninterrupted. Felt a sudden impulse to take a look. To watch her sleeping. Check if this room, unlike the others in the house, had been decorated, had a bedside lamp instead of a neon light. Curtains. Photographs.
I reached for the handle, but its metal was cold. Reminded me of where and who I was.
‘Sleep well,’ I whispered to the door.
The toilet was a war zone, no paper left. I pinched my nose at the top and snorted its contents directly into the bathroom sink, the hurled mess the colour of olives. The night air hadn’t done me any good.
Flagging, I crawled into my sleeping bag and rubbed my feet together, waited for my body heat to do its job. My lungs felt like they were coagulating, a mounting headache threatening to dull the clarity that the burning of my car had allowed me.
Beyond the walls of Nara’s house, someone moaned. The sound stretched till it was more like wailing, as if issued from a place of deep sorrow.
I listened for more, but it had been lathed by the usual night noises. Roof creaks. May’s staccato snore. The shudder of the fridge quitting for a quarter-hour.
So I lay there, a fever coming on, but determined. Determined that stories about little girls spat out by rivers – or what Thaddeus had told me about the hollow-eyed ones – would not enter via the unguarded gateway of sleep. Disturb the ground that I’d gained.
ulanyi
to weep; cry out in pain; the howl of a dog
Pitjantjatjara language, Western Desert
76
The wailing repeated itself, vaulting through a dream. Except there was a knocking with it, a fist on wood, and someone calling. ‘Nara! Nara!’
She reached the door before I did, my jeans still not zipped, my head woozy from my cold and lack of sleep. The room did a broad sway before it settled in for good, the light outside brazen.
Nara’s sister, Amanyi, was pulling her out onto the verandah, explaining something to her. The Pitjantjatjara was angst-ridden and broken up with gasps, the only word I seized a name, the rest like trying to guess the meaning of a news item from the last word. All I knew was that it was bad, Nara jittery, her sister with her hand over her heart.
Cliff – that was the only word I’d gleaned. Maybe it had something to do with the grog running. Maybe he’d got caught this time, or worse.
I squatted. Straightened my sleeping bag. But decided it was best to give them some privacy. In the bathroom, I cleared an ocean of snot into the sink, the dryness of the desert air causing what remained to set like quick-dry concrete. A pounding worked its way up the centre of my forehead.
‘Fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuck,’ I said, employing an old home remedy: swearing yourself out of torment. But whatever I had – whatever was happening out there – seemed resistant to abuse. I heard a dog barking madly out front. Remembered how Cliff had held the jerry can up to me, his eyes telling me it was the only way.
‘Fuck!’
The word echoed back at me.
Roopie was standing in the doorway, his hair stuck with twigs as if a bird had taken up residence there. He was making a good job of the f given the absence of it in his own language. Maybe he’d got in some practice prior to my arrival in Ininyingi.
‘Ssh,’ I said, stooping to his height.
‘Sssshhh.’
‘Your mum and your aunty are busy right now.’
He frowned, his eyes crusty. I coaxed him over to the sink, wiped his face with the wetted end of a towel. His head cradled in my hand, his body relaxed with each swipe.
‘That’s more like it,’ I said.
I steered him towards the kitchen, his shoulders child-fragile beneath his Spiderman t-shirt. Nara was coming through the front door, arms wrapped around her body.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked.
‘There was an accident.’
‘Cliff?’
‘Uwa.’
‘Is he all right?’
‘Wiya,’ she said. ‘He’s in the hospital. In Alice.’
‘Shit. How bad is it?’
‘Bad.’
‘What about the boy who was with him?’
She shook her head.
The drone that had set in with my cold intensified. Someone cruised by outside. I caught a glimpse of a white tray, and for a moment I thought it was Cliff. That he’d come back early from Areyonga, his yakking daughters having got the better of him. And riding shotgun, the kid with the Marley shirt.
‘The boy. Was he family?’
‘Mother’s side.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, wondering if I should shake her hand, like she had mine that first day. But her arms were still wrapped tight around her as if a slight loosening and she would come undone.
‘What’s going to happen now?’ I asked.
‘Sorry camp.’
‘Will you be going?’
‘Uwa.’
‘For how long?’
‘You can stay here. No problem.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
Nara hung her head.
Something had changed, and I tried to locate what it was, what had caused it – the moment, the place. Maybe it was this new death. Could one grief displace another? But it was too soon.
I held my hand up as if making a pledge. Felt a compulsion to reclaim space for what had brought me here in the first place.
‘Something happened, didn’t it?’ I said. ‘To make him leave like that.’
‘Who?’
‘I’m not supposed to say his name.’
Nara frowned, as if searching among the dead.
‘There was a fight,’ she said.
‘Between you and him?’
‘No.’
Nara stepped back. Roopie, who’d been standing behind her, fell to the floor. Was quickly on his feet again.
‘His father was here,’ she said, gesturing with her mouth to the boy. ‘He was angry. He didn’t like that I was with another man.’
‘A white man.’
‘Maybe. Rick is a jealous one, that’s why it didn’t work with us. He got angry a lot. Roopie and I would stay in the women’s house sometimes. Better there. Then he left and after there was no more trouble. Not for a long time. Not till that night.’
‘He tried to hurt you and Jed tried to stop it.’
She flinched, from the sound of his name or the memory, I couldn’t be sure. ‘Uwa.’
‘That’s so like him. God, I can just see it.’
And I could. When someone Jed loved was threatened, he could become a man obsessed, some function triggered in his brain, his body a slave to it. The first time I’d seen it was when we were still in high school and he’d fallen for a girl in our class. One of the other kids had called her a slut and Jed had wrapped his fingers around the kid’s neck. He hadn’t tightened them; he’d just maintained the hold till the kid had slackened and looked away. She’d never thanked him for it, spread some ugly rumour about him being in some kind of lover’s tryst with her attacker. Jed had never said anything, but I knew it had hit him hard. Like most things we love, she’d held the promise of something he couldn’t put
words to.
Nara pointed to the flat-screen, then over at the door.
‘We were watching TV,’ she said. ‘I heard a car pull up and suddenly Rick was there. He had a beard. He looked different. Roopie screamed and that made him more angry.’
Roopie looked up at the sound of his name. What had he seen in his short life?
‘Ngananya nyangatja?’ said Nara, her face taking on a savagery that was masculine, her shoulders squared. ‘Ngananya nyangatja?, he kept saying, again and again, who’s this, who’s this? Then he grabbed my arm like this and started shaking me, and that’s when …’
‘Jed hit him.’
‘Uwa.’
‘More than once.’
‘Uwa.’
‘He hurt him badly, didn’t he?’
She nodded, her eyes trailing towards the stick that was always by the door, probably put there as a safeguard against her husband in the first place. This was where it had all happened, the violence of it filling the space now, animating the players. The husband bearded but cowering beneath the stick. Jed with his arm raised and shuddering with righteous indignation. Roopie watching these two men, one white, one black. Fathers. Nara screaming that scream I’d heard across the desert. But it didn’t add up. By the river that night, at that party, Jed had made it clear – always had, in what he said and what he did. You own your actions and their consequences. So why run? Keep running until the only solution seemed a fatal one?
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ I said. ‘Him taking off like that.’
Nara was standing with her back to the wall. I looked from her to Roopie to a grey stain on the concrete at my feet.
‘After Rick left, he kept walking there and back,’ she said indicating the far corner of the room. ‘Said he didn’t belong here.’
‘Didn’t belong?’
‘I think that’s why he left. Went back to his country.’
But he hadn’t, I wanted to tell her. For some reason he’d got waylaid in Melbourne, listening to that CD over and over, her photo pressed in a book, marker to a poem. Never made it across the waters, the river waiting for him, rising and falling as if it breathed for the whole island.