by Julie Janson
‘Don’t spread that stuff around, Gertie. You know nothing. Mind your own business! How do you know it wasn’t your husband Ray? Yeah, how about that?’
Gossip went around like lightning. Orlando hung his head and described the scene of the dropped blanket again to Hubert as he was burning off, flicking his cigarettes into the brown grass. Jane chewed her nails in silence beside him.
‘Getting a bit of the velvet are ya, mate? Mix it with the gins, you’ll get shot. Yella kids runnin’ round town.’
‘No, I didn’t. I can’t help looking, they sing me. She made some sort of magic. Those old men put some stones into me in initiation. I can’t help it; it’s a powerful magic. The young women can pull you in. It’s like a potion you can’t resist. You don’t believe me’, Orlando said. Jane shoved him and looked at Hubert.
‘He’s weak as piss. Sung you! This blackfella country will drive you insane’, Hubert said and laughed.
‘Some things; they showed me stuff, like I can’t talk about it’, said Orlando.
‘Forget it. You’re going troppo. Gotta be on guard. Gotta watch those young ones’, said Hubert.
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘Now look, I bring Edie presents home from my trips to the East, silks and stuff. Arr, the women like that kind of thing. I bought her a lovely bit with red embroidery of the phoenix, and gold tassels from a little back street in Chinatown. Lovely … Mate, you take care of Jane. She’s real good with those kids. Don’t let her burn out. Hey mate, many a good man has been destroyed by the temptation up here’. Hubert got on his motorbike and roared away.
At the caravan, Orlando clenched his fist for the first time. Jane thought he was going to hit her; she was shocked by his impulse for violence, could see his teeth gritted, imagined him crushing her nose. He glared, the tension was terrible, she didn’t flinch, and she looked back and swallowed hard.
‘You are a traitorous liar too’, he said.
‘Oh is that it? Try harder’, she said.
He continued with tears dribbling, ‘Can’t you see what you’ve done? Having a quiet fling in Katherine is one thing. I heard you are having an affair with David!’
‘You had sex with Aboriginal girls you picked up in the pub. You could have dozens of half caste kids running around the town’, she said. She ignored his particular accusation. It seemed safer.
‘Everything we do in this community is transparent. You’ve destroyed all our work here; no-one will respect us now with this gossip. I look like a fool and you look like a slut’, he said. She raised her hand. He grabbed it and twisted as Jane cringed and fell against the table. She bruised her arm; it stung. He crashed outside in a fury, slammed the wire door off its hinges. He cried in rage as he picked up a wooden chair and smashed it again and again against the ground. It hung in bits from his grip. Aaron woke up and stood at the door in his pyjamas. He had wet his pants.
The missionary neighbours came out of their caravans, staring openmouthed. It was better than the movies.
Jane stormed out the door, ran to the wire fence and bellowed. ‘What do you think you’re looking at? Go on piss off, you mindless missionaries! You wouldn’t have the guts to have a fight. You’re weak indoctrinated whiteys with no passion, just heads full of inane Bible quotations. Praise the Lord!’
Orlando laughed, and called out to Jane.
‘You tell ’em, Jane’. She swerved and then stepped up to the fence. Dixie, the missionary mother, was quivering. She smoothed her apron.
‘When you arrived here, I asked you why you had come to this place. All you could come up with was that God had told you to come. Like you had some individual chat line to God, like you were the chosen ones. You didn’t come to escape your boring Epping Baptist Church upbringings or your sad sexless empty marriage. You came because God told you to come and save the natives! What bullshit!’
Dixie’s face was a mask of horror. She sat down on a plastic chair. Jane slammed her door. An hour later, Dixie knocked. She was holding a dish of food with a potholder.
CHAPTER 13
Disaster
After putting Aaron to sleep, Jane went out to lie under the dark blue sky. The Milky Way was a pathway for a Dreamtime serpent, its black undulating form slithering above. White pulsating stars, tiny sparkling lights going on and on: the vastness was exquisite, so vast and never ending.
The next morning, she walked into the schoolroom where the Lanniwah girls held out their hands to her to press. They nodded to each other. Jane was oblivious to the atmosphere of impending doom that hung around her like a lame dog. David was occasionally absent from school. If he did come, he was quiet and withdrawn.
It was time for the monthly teachers’ meeting; Orlando was present to help with school planning, and he made himself at home on a swag near the school. David sat with his head down on a little school chair.
‘David, can you take the minutes?’ said Jane.
‘Yeeai, I got a pen. You tell me what to write.’
‘Yep, she’s the head teacher. You do what she says: she’s the boss’, said Orlando.
‘We have to keep up with lesson plans, and write up the day book’, said Jane.
‘Very important, someone might want to read them in hell.’
‘I’m just trying to keep the records properly. Can we keep to the agenda?’ Jane said.
‘Yes, let’s do that. Can you spell agenda, David?’
‘Do you want to say something, Orlly?’
‘Why don’t you just tell him what to do? This meeting stuff is just going through the motions. You’ll make all the decisions any way’, said Orlando. He picked up his guitar and strummed. David leant on his knees; his head couldn’t get any lower.
‘I don’t. Let’s discuss student behaviour, item two’, said Jane.
‘Let’s not. I’m going for a swim. David, you want to come for a swim? Oh, I forgot, you usually swim with Miss.’ He stood up whistling, put his guitar over his shoulder and walked out. The schoolroom was very quiet.
Orlando was a person for truth. When it suited him. Jane thought he had no rights to say anything about her life. He seemed to want to confront David and it would be an awkward moment between the men. However, it would be liberating, the truth: everyone liked the truth; it would feel fantastic. They all walked down by the billabong, Orlando pulled aside a bush for David to pass. He picked up some gum leaves, rubbed them in his hands and inhaled.
‘You’re sleeping with my woman’, said Orlando.
‘Narr’, said David.
‘I’m not your woman! You left me. Stop this please’, said Jane.
‘Everyone says you are. Please don’t tell a lie.’
‘It’s none of your business, Orlly!’
‘Not sleeping. Just, you know, one time’, said David. Orlando stared at the top of David’s head.
‘Please, look at me.’
Jane chewed her fingers. David lowered his chin to his chest. Orlando grabbed David’s arm, Jane pushed Orlando’s hand away. ‘Don’t.’
‘Okay, don’t look at me, but I feel like hitting you.’
‘You can try that’, said David as he looked into his rival’s eyes. The two men stood staring at each other. David put his head down again.
Orlando spoke with a trembling voice: ‘I helped you. I showed you how to teach maths. I thought we were friends. You betrayed me, white-anted me.’
David hung his head again.
‘Great choice of words.’
‘I’m sorry, you like my brother. I did the wrong thing. She’s not happy’, David said.
‘Happy, what the hell does that mean? Happy – no one’s happy. I think about killing myself every day’, Orlando said.
‘She alone woman, not mine’, said David.
‘Maybe she likes your skin – it’s black, and mine’s too pale.’
David was alert; he looked afraid of the direction of the conversation.
‘You’ve wrecked my relationship. What about the kids
we teach?’
‘Look who’s talking. You screw around, you left us!’
David moved away into the bush.
Orlando yelled; ‘Yeah, run away! That’s easy for you – no responsibility, just run and keep running! Go walkabout!’
Jane felt a rush of anxiety; her head pulsed. She looked at Orlando and he was crying in humiliation. It was an act of stupid jealousy. She once had wanted Orlando at the school: he was a fantastic creative teacher, but that was over; they managed without him. Why had he come back? Just another egotistical whitefella who thought he knew it all. He walked calmly up to her.
‘I’m breaking up with you’, he said.
‘I thought we gave up on each other a while ago.’
‘I’m living with a wonderful woman that I met at the conference.’
She picked up a rock and threw it for old times’ sake. It spun in the air and smashed against the road. He had her left months ago; it was simply his shell of a body that stood there. She felt an enormous relief.
Orlando walked up towards the camp; he would sit with the men. She knew what it was like to be alone, sad with her child. She could contemplate her future. Jane sat on her front step and saw that the vast bright blue sky was half the world. It was never ending.
PART THREE
HONEY COLLECTING SEASON, FLYING FOXES ARE FAT – 1976
Stringy bark flowers are sweet smelling, and Lanniwah children are eating sugar bag wild honey. Fresh water swamps are drying out and Jane watches the burning off of grasses.
CHAPTER 1
No Shoes
Jane was waiting for a visit from Brian and Rosie. The letter had said they would arrive soon. Weeks passed and Sunday afternoon at the station stretched out in a sweaty gloom. Jane saw Lanniwah children lined up outside the store to get lollies. Edie’s children already had theirs. Elisha licked her lollypop luxuriously at the Lanniwah. David strolled up and bought sweets to share amongst the children. He smiled at Jane.
Jane knew this scene, the segregation. When Aboriginal people went to the movies in Taree, they had to sit in the front where a dirty rope separated the sections. She had sat up front with her Koori cousins just to thumb her nose at the other part of her family who thought they were white. Most of her friends were black, didn’t wear shoes; she played with them on the river and built rafts, fished for flathead and made little fires to cook on.
Jane tried to remember if the racism was obvious. Well no, not really. The white women would ridicule her teenage purple-dyed hair or long second-hand dresses. Samuel was horrified that his daughter wore recycled clothes; that meant real poverty. Although, he didn’t offer Jane or her siblings any money and kept putting all his earnings down on horse races or buying rounds for his mates at the pub.
Childhood was made of colourful tableaus in the back yard while her dad cut off the chickens’ heads and the family plucked them, flies covering their feathered blood-speckled hands. Her mother called it ‘making money for Christmas’. Jane recalled that they ate endless meals of tripe and onions. Jane would cross the paddock and skirt around the cows to avoid the embarrassment of going to the local shop to ask for a half pound of broken Arnotts biscuits. The train had roared past; someone chucked a rock at her and yelled:
‘Black slut.’ She’d picked it up and hurled it back.
Then, the time her father had lost his job, ‘laid off’, there were gloomy no-meat nights, just a fried egg on bread. Jane’s English grandmother said, ‘Sam is a wonderful man, but not a good provider’. Her mother had developed malnutrition with sunken dark eyes from going without so the four children could eat. Fear had lurked in the kitchen and arguments poured out of their parents’ bedroom.
Jane sometimes wished all of them would vanish from her consciousness – the whole lot of them, her dad, sister and her brothers – just evaporate; her brain cleansed, instead of them hanging around cluttering her present existence. If the memories could just give her a break.
In Harrison, it was moving towards the Dry; a northeast wind blew, mud had changed into bogs and cracked earth, people collected sugar bag honey and dust began to billow along the road and still no sign of her historian friends. She searched the road for dust, for their rattling car and companionship, but they didn’t materialise.
There was a week of dreams and supernatural events and plain, sad signals that something was brewing. Jane had a dream: a neon sign – ‘The Crocodile Hotel’. David walked into the back bar (a man walked into a bar). A young Lanniwah girl, lithe and golden, a yella fella, danced a slow dance in front of a jukebox. Elvis sang, ‘Don’t step on my blue suede shoes’. David danced near the girl, grinning. He had asked around and found out that she was the right moiety for him, ‘right way’ potential wife. He motioned his head and she fluttered her eyelashes, flashed her eyes, and was keen. She pinned frangipani flowers over her ears and chattered to her friends. Jane wandered if she herself was in love with the coquette. Anything was possible in a dream. The girl swayed her hips in her faded jeans. David followed her out into the night. Jane woke. It was so erotic.
The next day, Jane felt embarrassed by her dream. It was as though David knew about it, knew her lust. He sensed her prickly mood.
They sat outside after lunch with Margie. David talked, about more dreams and Dreaming, like the ‘proper way’ for people to care for land; the ‘right skin’ had to look after the people’s land.
‘This place for girl frill-neck lizard sitdown place’, Margie said.
‘Do you ever get sick of those stories? Having to think about everywhere you put your foot?’
‘Dis true for dis place. No other thing true like dis.’ Margie frowned and David spoke:
‘Yeeai. We look after country. One mob light fires for other mob with kerosene fire sticks, but in old story, one old man, Nagaran, he burn grasses, little fire spread ceremony all about country. Old Pelican. His mother, she smell smoke dat day. She see smoke coming, and something strange, it smell like meat, man meat, Wunungah bin killem all other mob in Arnhem Land.’
Jane looked to the horizon, a flicker of yellow flame, walking fire. They watched a dry season fire approach, the air smelling of eucalypt smoke. Whistling kites and chicken hawks dived on the hot winds, feasted on lizards. Jane saw it coming – oh great, a fire to burn down her caravan.
David took off his hat and ruffled his black hair. She watched. He looked into her face and then away. He was very uncomfortable. Jane reached out her hand to touch his, he let her stroke his warm skin. It tingled, flames shot through to her vagina. She hated herself. Couldn’t she just be there? Wasn’t it enough to have this spiritual experience? To feel all calm inside, why couldn’t she just meditate and practice desire-controlling yoga like other people? Downward dog or lifting tiger or something. Why did she have to change it all? Jane had let loose some kind of lustful monster; she fantasised and became obsessed. David looked down at her hand on his skin, he leant his curly head against it, and warmth pulsated between them. He knew about her: he sensed everything.
David was on her mind all day, all night. She wrote his name in the sand and made up scenarios involving hot rapid sex up against walls. She stayed back at school and stared at his classroom in the hope he would also stay back. He didn’t. She lounged outside the store hoping he would come in to buy food. Jane was in the grip of intense burning love – she couldn’t get David out of her head. Someone must have sung her, made her a victim. She left scribbled letters at his house and his Lanniwah brothers smiled, polite as always. ‘David, I need to see you, I am going mad. I want you. Meet me.’
Eventually, Jane got up in the middle of the night while Aaron slept. She couldn’t sleep. She knew she was being a bad mother. She wrapped herself in a sarong and, naked underneath, she walked to David’s home. Insane. She stopped half way, such a stupid thing to do; she would turn back. It was crazy. She was imagining the same story that happened to Orlando: she would be the girl in a blanket. Excitement pulsed; she was nervou
s but inflamed. She wanted to experience this, to feel him against her, the fire of it.
Dogs howled. She scratched at his window and her eyes darted, her chest throbbed, the fly screen was broken, his hand slid out and grabbed her wrist.
‘What you doin’, bub?’
‘I want you. I can’t stand it.’ David opened the window and lifted her inside. His bed had been moved inside on a concrete floor, no sheets, just a blanket. He pushed a dog from the bed.
‘Come here, you okay now. I love you’, he said. She whimpered, he stroked her and she knew it would be hard for him to make love to a crying woman.
She walked home into the humid breeze. She took the red path that wove through the Lanniwah camp. Some twenty people lay asleep on blankets by smouldering fires. She tiptoed through the camp, a short cut, but a stick cracked and two men, now awake, called out:
‘Wey, ghost. Who dere?’
Jane panicked: how to explain her presence in the camp? Like a spirit running through the pandanus. The men grabbed spears and womerahs; she heard them running after her. They shouted, ‘Ghost, stop!’
Her heart was beating fast and her breath sped up. Luckily, she had been a school champion sprinter; she jumped logs and ran to her home. A shovel spear swished past her head. It landed with a sickening thud next to her leg. It would have sliced her open. She stood still, what to do? Move slowly – no run, escape. Jane dropped to the ground, she slithered along the dirt – what on earth was she doing? She made it to her door and shut it carefully after her. She leant against it panting. How could she have been so stupid? She could have been killed. Chest heaving, she gasped for air. Her son stood in the room.
‘Where were you, Mummy? I was scared.’
‘Sorry, darling. I wasn’t far. I’m here now.’
Jane crept into bed beside Aaron, his little form trembled. She lay awake all night, electric with love and fear. She thought about her need for security and fear of abandonment. Maybe this kind warm deep Lanniwah man would be someone to love forever.