True Country

by Kim Scott

And Raphael’s two wives, later on that day, were sitting in the quiet schoolyard, in the blue shade under the mango tree.

  Fallen mangoes—the last ones, bat-bitten, overripe, halfeaten, split and broken—were scattered on the ground around them. The bright fruit spilt flesh and the air was sweet with decay.

  Stella and Gloria sat with their heads bowed, but they were watchful, and sat with the tree between them and the community’s other buildings.

  Billy and Liz were walking home from the school when they saw those two women sitting there, hiding. They knew that Stella was married to Raphael in the church, and that Gloria is like a girlfriend to Raphael, but they all live together. Stella is Milton’s sister. Those women do not go away from their own house much, except that Raphael lets Stella go to the school each day, and then straight home again; special quick on payday.

  The four of them talked. Stella’s face was swollen. Gloria’s eyes moved quickly, and she was nervous like a kangaroo, watching out for her attacker.

  Raphael, you know, he bashes them. And he will, again, this day, when he finds them. He has told people he is looking for his wives. He is drunk. And they are in the safe grounds of the school.

  Billy walked away. He went home thinking, ‘This is not my business, what can we do anyway? I do not want to get involved.’ But Liz stayed. The two women were afraid. What can they do? Sometimes, they told her, they have stayed with the Sisters at the mission for a day, a night. But they worry now even about the Sisters, for they are getting old themselves. People are not so frightened of the mission any more. Raphael beats them even the more when they go back. Anyway, he’s told them not to go there.

  ‘What are you going to do? Stay here all night?’

  ‘Yes. Maybe the river.’

  Billy watched the three of them cross the green lawn. Behind them, as the sun inserted itself into the earth, the sky was spattered with red. His wife walked upright with her shoulders thrown back; the two other women were hunched, and looked around as if expecting a figure to leap at them from some hidden spot. Liz’s hair blazed with the dying sun, her white skin gleamed. The coming darkness seemed to coagulate in the other two women.

  After the meal Liz, Stella and Gloria sat at the kitchen table. They had the lights very dim. The women told Liz how they were beaten, sometimes with a stick, sometimes in front of Raphael’s family. He beats Gloria the most. They listed injuries for Liz, and lifted skirts and tops to show their scars.

  Billy sat in another room, looking at a book and listening. The light was bright.

  Once, twice? A vehicle drove noisily around the track which ran along two sides of their block. The headlights swept across the windows. The first of these times, Stella and Gloria rushed into the darkened passageway which led to the bedrooms.

  Liz remained where she was, and sat up straighter. Billy clenched his jaw.

  Gloria and Stella sat together in the dark passage and continued conversing with Liz through the doorway. Liz told them of restraining orders, of contacting the police, of leaving Raphael. But where could they go? This is their home. The police? When will they help black women? And anyway, they in Wyndham, Derby. And Raphael, he is not always so savage and so wild.

  The women stayed the night, and early the next morning, they gathered in the kitchen in a fug of cigarette smoke and stale clinging dreams. Eyes stung.

  This day holds dread, so Billy thinks, and he wants them to go now, and leave him to rest. He has spoken to them but little, and watching them inhale on their last cigarettes he realises they will soon have to go, if only for more tobacco.

  He watches them walk across the lawn, through the various gates and the schoolyard toward the camp. He hears Liz speaking of the shame and violence of their lives.

  It is as if they were exhaled from the house, and now the doors slide open and they return, inhaled again. The curtains are pulled across the doors and windows, and the women slump at the kitchen table once more.

  Billy stands at the sink. Watches through a gap in the curtains. Washes the cups. Ashtrays. Grey ash on his fingers, floating in the waters, whirlpooling down the drain.

  Stella and Gloria have no plans for the day. They have just now been to Stella’s family’s house. Sebastian and Milton gave them some cigarettes. They asked them where they had stayed for the night. But the women have no plans for this day. Liz cannot think of a plan for them.

  Raphael will have plans.

  And then, there he was at the door. Stella and Gloria, warned at the last moment, had fled into the bedrooms.

  Raphael had knocked. Raphael was dishevelled. His shirt was unbuttoned at the sleeves and chest, and hanging out. His eyes were large and bloodshot. He stood outside the doorway, and looked past Billy when the door slid open, and saw the chairs pushed back from the kitchen table, the ashtray, the smoke where two bodies had been.

  ‘You got my women here Mr Storey.’ It was not really a question, but was a cautious statement. Billy was pleased he had the protection of a title.

  ‘I’m mad, you know ... Sebastian tell me ... All night looking for my women, looking looking. What you doing this for? All night. I’ve got a three o’clock brain here, you know?’ He put an index finger against his temple. ‘I’m crazy-kind now. Where they?’

  He looked past Billy, throwing his gaze aggressively through the room, but Billy stood in the doorway and was relieved that Raphael did not seek to force himself into the room.

  ‘Raphael, I...’

  ‘You can’t do this! Who said you a big boss like god?’

  Veins protruded from his throat. His eyes held tears.

  ‘We can’t let them go, we can’t give them to you as if they were ... They’re frightened, Raphael. We must help them, even if that means...’ Billy’s voice was soft, perhaps whining.

  Raphael raised himself onto his toes with tension, and lifted clenched fists to his face. Billy fought to remain calm and slouched.

  ‘Raphael, of course we can’t keep them forever, but if you go we’ll...’

  Liz listened. She thought if she had a gun she would shoot the man. The women listened.

  And Billy and Raphael, they walked together across the lawn. It was still soft, early morning. They walked out of the small fenced yard, and stood fifty, a hundred metres away.

  Raphael stopped at the gate which lead to the mission, and turned around.

  ‘Don’t go back that way, Raphael.’ Billy was pleading. He didn’t want to focus Raphael’s anger on himself.

  The women, heads down, gazing at the ground before them, walked tentatively out of the house and onto the lawn. Liz remained in the doorway. The women moved as silently as shadows.

  From across by the front of the house Raphael watched them. ‘You fuckin’ sluts! Sluts!’ He laughed and sneered at them. ‘Hide from me, eh? I get you, you see, I show you.’ He shook his fist at them, but he did not move.

  Stella glanced up briefly. Raphael swore at her again, and then turned, flung open the gate and was gone, of in the other direction. The women glanced around, and circled for a moment, not stopping. ‘Thanks Liz,’ they mumbled, ‘maybe we go see Sisters.’

  There was defeat everywhere.

  Billy and Liz retreated. They locked their doors again, moving without speech. The roar of the air-conditioner seemed very loud.

  Liz shouted. ‘What could we do? Sebastian told him where they were, didn’t he? What father, what love is that? That bastard! Bastards!’

  A pounding at the door. A pounding. Even through the curtain they could see that it was Raphael. Billy went to the door, and opened it. Raphael had not tried it, and Billy didn’t want him to know they had locked it.

  ‘Why you doing this, Storey? You got them here, again, them women. They leave their children behind! Call ’mself mothers!’

  In one hand he held a thick piece of wood, a club. At his other side stood two small children. Raphael had the hand of each of them clasped in his own. The boy was grinning.

  ‘Y
ou can’t come to me with weapons.’ Billy surprised himself with the tone of his voice. ‘You can’t bully your way in here, it’s not might is right here.’

  But he could if he wanted to, it could be right.

  ‘But you, eh? You hide my women.’

  ‘They’re not here.’

  Raphael was bobbing about, now tapping his club in the palm of his hand. He looked over Billy’s shoulders, trying to see around the very corners of the room before him. When would he shoulder Billy aside?

  ‘Raphael—leave your weapon, there will be no weapons in my house—come, see for yourself.’ Billy stepped aside, and ostentatiously swept his arm into the room. Almost before Billy had completed the movement, Raphael had placed his club against the inside of the doorframe and was across the room.

  Billy fastidiously grabbed the club between thumb and forefinger and propped it outside the door.

  Raphael, having raced through all the rooms in the house, was back. He looked to where he had left his club, and erupted. ‘My club! Where...?’ Billy pointed to it outside the door.

  ‘No clubs, I said...’

  Raphael turned from him and grabbed the club. ‘Don’t touch my stick. I know where they...’ He ran around the corner of the house, muttering and cursing.

  The children looked after him. Even when he did not return they continued staring in the direction he had gone. Billy and Liz welcomed them in, and the four of them went to the front verandah with cordial and biscuits. They sat there in a numbed silence. The children slurped. Across the yard the new teacher peered out of his door for a moment, gave a little wave, and withdrew again.

  The boy pointed in the other direction, his face lighting up. There was Raphael, jogging across the track toward the paddock where the horses were kept. He still carried the club. He was shirtless, and his stomach jiggled above the belt of his dark nylon trousers.

  Suddenly he quickened his pace. He put one hand on a fence post and swung himself heavily over the barbed wire, stumbling as his feet touched the other side.

  ‘Got you bitches,’ he yelled as he sprinted into the paddock.

  Then they could not see him because of the trees in their front yard and that edge of the paddock. Raphael’s son leapt from the verandah and ran to the fence. He stood there, grinning excitedly, trying to see through the trees. The daughter followed. They thought perhaps they could hear screams.

  ‘Come. Come away. Let’s go inside and watch a video.’

  Oh yes, the children were happy to do that. But, ‘He teach them, eh?’ said the grinning boy.

  A few days later Liz saw Gloria in the store. Gloria did not look directly at her, but whispered as she limped past, ‘He said we never talk to you again.’ Her face was swollen.

  Billy heard that Raphael had proper caught them all right. Hit them around the legs with his club, and half-dragged, let them limp, home.

  Hit them again there. Later he dragged Gloria screaming from the shower by her hair. He slapped and hit her in front of his family; men, women, boys, girls, and all. She fell down on the ground in front of them naked and slippery wet and crying, and all the sand and little sticks stuck to her skin and tears.

  Gerrard visited Billy and Liz, to say goodbye. ‘Raphael’s been at it again, did you hear?’ They said nothing. ‘His wives hid from him all night apparently. No one knows where. We thought with the Sisters, but it must’ve been by the river.

  ‘I saw him chasing them with a stick, he looked pretty wild.

  ‘I heard it, I was in the workshop, when he caught them in the paddock there. I could hear. It sounded like torture, them begging for mercy. Whack, whack. They were screaming.’

  They tried to seem not interested, to change the subject.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Gerrard, ‘I’ll be glad to be out of here. I’m leaving in a week or two. Got a little business to run in Carnarvon.’

  What? Running a bus charter? Selling artefacts made by silly Aborigine?

  ‘Glad to be out of this mad place.’

  True, this be a mad place, in some ways. But we can fix that. Maybe. This one was a real story, but should not be. This bashing to try show he is a powerful one, and to have control.

  Words...

  Milton’s battered and coughing Hilux left from one side of Billy’s yard as Jasmine, having walked through the school grounds, arrived through the opposite gate. She greeted them, and her eyes followed Milton’s smoking vehicle. He didn’t appear to look back.

  ‘He reckons it’s not worth leaving it here any longer,’ said Billy.

  ‘He’s probably worried he’ll bump into me,’ said Jasmine.

  Their heads turned to her like those of puppets on shared strings.

  Oh.

  ‘You know I’ve been with him, sleeping with him.’

  Oh. We thought. We knew.

  ‘I’m pregnant I think. I’m out of here.’

  They went into the roaring house, pleased to share this information. They must have tea, coffee, some ceremony. Find out more.

  ‘I’ve decided. I just want a baby. A black baby.’ Oh yes?

  ‘I like Milton, but ... He’s married, kids. His family’s giving me a hard time. I’ve gotta go.’

  From outside the house you wouldn’t hear their voices, just see mouths moving. All you hear is the air-conditioner roaring.

  Jasmine’s bangles slid up and down her forearms. She brushed the hair from her face, wrinkled her brow. Sighed. Lit a cigarette. Looked at it.

  ‘Have to give these up.’

  Smoke above them now like spirits quietly watching.

  ‘Is it true you kept the women here the other night?’

  Oh. Yes. But.

  ‘I’ve gotta go. I’m out of here. Tomorrow. With Gerrard, he’s driving out while he can, before the rain. Otherwise it means the expense of flying all the way to Perth.

  ‘Bloody old Samson, you know he scored Gerrard’s fishing net? He gave it to him.

  ‘Tomorrow. I’m going home. Live with my mother, me and my baby. I hope he’s dark, dark like they are here.’

  She got to get away but. She wants to own one, herself, safely. Maybe she right.

  Jasmine says, ‘And Bill, what has happened with your baby?’

  Puzzled expressions. She continued. ‘Can I say that? You were so keen early in the year, I thought. Your writing, you know, you were going to collect stories from Fatima and that.’

  Oh yes.

  ‘Yes, but ... Just for school. And I have no time. They don’t read well, not without a lot of editing.’ He shrugged his shoulders in resignation, bowed and danced a little defence.

  ‘Another failed project. You’ve gotta have failures.’ Liz’s intention was encouragement, and she leaned to him.

  ‘It’s problematical, see. I write for the kids, but I edit. So, do I change it too much? Do I write only for the kids here? Who speaks? Have I the right to...’ He almost clasped his hands in front of his face, almost looked melodramatically offstage.

  ‘Piss off, Bill.’ Like a club smashed on the table. ‘You’re making excuses. Excuses. It’s simple. Look at me.’ Jasmine patted her stomach. ‘You just do it. That’s all that matters.’

  She seemed so fertile, and so healthy now, glowing and growing before them. She sat, already, like a heavily pregnant woman, with her knees apart and her shoulders back. She held her head high and angled, mocking Billy.

  Billy felt crowded and closed in. The two women exchanged glances like lovers. He was scrawny, already wizened, hollow within, and Jasmine was expanding, suddenly not the nervous and bothered woman of such a short time before. Liz moved closer to her, and Bill had to go.

  ‘Anyway, my fishing time. Only a few hours left ’til dark.’

  ‘It might rain.’

  ‘We should be so lucky. I’ll walk down and hope for that.’

  Billy went diagonally across the schoolyard, heading for the river. He saw Sebastian and Gabriella slowly approaching from one side of the yard, Fatima and
Deslie from the other. The five of them met. If you were to see this from above, to trace the footprints of the walkers from the moment they entered the school grounds, their combined paths would form an arrow, pointing to the river. The stem, a single set of footprints, would appear weakest. The tip of the arrow-head would be where they met, and now stood, at the gate exiting the school and closest to the river. They were not, at the time, aware of this design, but they saw the coincidence, and smiled just because of that.

  ‘Are we all heading in the same direction?’

  ‘I want to see you.’ Sebastian was puffing. ‘Not come in school, other time, never.’

  They detoured into the workshop, because Sebastian had wanted to borrow a tool, a wood plane.

  ‘Goin’ fishin’, eh?’ said Deslie.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Good time. Hot, rains coming soon. Soon be barramundi time. Maybe you lucky!’

  ‘Hope so,’ said Billy.

  ‘We all call them barramundi, eh?’ said Sebastian. ‘Same, it’s Aboriginal word. Not ours but, we say...’ He laughed, and, looking at Deslie and Gabriella, said it was almost like they were doing a naming ceremony here. ‘Young men,’ he said, ‘come into a circle of old ones, after they been in the bush a long time, and they say the true names of things.’

  He grinned, and nodded at Billy. This was important. This was advice. This was true. ‘We show them, on a stick, the picture, tell them the name, they eat some of that one. Name for this; we tell them the word. And they say the word, touch that carved stick in the proper place, eat the food. Then emu, kangaroo, goanna; same thing all the time. Give him the power, see.’

  Gabriela observed intently.

  ‘Soon, he do that, maybe.’ Sebastian indicated Deslie who, standing against the brightly lit window, was dissolving at the edges.

  ‘It’s not right to speak too much. You, Gabriella ... Me, I don’t do that now, I’m a Christian, see.’ For a moment he looked nervous, guilty.

  ‘But sometimes that’s the same, little bit, isn’t it?’ asked Fatima, but it was not really a question.

  Sebastian looked particularly small and frail today, and was shaking even more than usual. ‘Maybe you. You do that. You could maybe be Aborigine.’