by Kim Scott
‘We all miss your father. We could do with him here, for this Peace Plaque opening.’
An old man had appeared among them, as if he’d materialised from the air.
‘Peace Park, isn’t it?’ he said. Then turned his attention on Tilly.
‘Hello, bub. You’re Jim’s girl.’
The man swept back his mane of silver hair in one grand gesture. He closed his eyes and lifted his face. Look at me, he might well have said. Look at me. His hair and beard were tinted red; there was red powder on his skin too.
‘Pa Wilfred,’ said Kathy by way of introduction.
‘Yeah, we met. Hi.’
Wilfred was glad of their attention. ‘Yeah, your dad was great at the prison. But should’ve done a Welcome to Country. They don’t like you doing Welcome to Country in prison, unna?’ Wilfred smiled. There was a silence. Wilfred acted it out – a speech, then clicked his heels – ‘Ok, now you’re all welcome to stay, but I’ve gotta be going. See ya.’ He mimed a stylised escape. Lifted a foot, as if about to step over a small wall. ‘From the frying pan . . .’ He opened his hands, his arms, in a universal gesture of resignation.
Nita took back the thread: ‘Crims and thieves, all round him. Our boys, and the pollies too . . .’
‘And half the screws . . .’
‘No way out.’
‘They were all clapping him and the boys. No one ever knew they had it in them.’
‘Gerry was inside then too, helping Jim. They got hold of some of the stuff your pop did with the land council. Things your pop never learned your dad, what everyone wants to know now, half of them making it up. Used to get thrashed for some of that when I was a kid. Different times . . .’
Tilly remembered her father and all those men in green polyester. She got her father’s name and went to meet him, then things went crazy. Went to see him again and he cried.
Wilfred looked into his cup of tea – it was huge, almost the size of a deep soup bowl, with a handle on one side only. ‘Only one cup of tea a day,’ he said, answering her attention. ‘So I gotta make it worth it.’ He laughed. ‘Maybe two sometimes. If a tough day, you know. Hey, you sleep alright? No nightmares or nothing?’
‘I only got here this morning.’
‘Lucky, ’cause there’s . . .’ and he named various spirit creatures, ‘really – round here. Little men, tease you. Grab you in your sleep.’
Tilly tightened. Fuck you mister no man gunna grab me in my bed or anywhere ever again.
‘Oh, go away, Wilfred.’ Kathy put her arm around Tilly. ‘Don’t worry about him.’ She squeezed Tilly lightly, took her arm away. ‘He shown you the photo yet?’ She spoke to Wilfred. ‘Go on then.’
‘Was just about to.’ Wilfred handed Tilly a phone and an image of Kathy, taken from behind, walking next to a group of trees. ‘See anything there, watching her?’
You mean like us, looking at her now, thought Tilly. Wilfred’s long fingernail hovered over the photo. Then: something in the trees, there. ‘See him?’ Tilly glimpsed a hint, a maybe-something, and then a thin-limbed creature, some Gollum or goblin clear as daylight in a tangle of branches. A little thrill of fear surprised her. She insisted disbelief. Looked away from the photo toward the trees at the edge of their camp. Back to the photo. Couldn’t see it, only a hint of who might be there among the limbs in the photograph. She glanced again at the trees; they trembled and shivered, moved by a little breeze.
‘You seen it!’ Wilfred was delighted. He named a spirit creature in the old tongue. ‘He’ll be looking at you. They don’t know you, see. They know this one.’ He indicated Kathy. ‘And they don’t try anything with me. They all around us right now, looking. But you can’t see ’em.’
Kathy pushed him lightly. He swayed as if he were about to fall from the chair.
‘Oh, you silly old man.’ Kathy laughed at him. ‘Don’t listen to him, Tilly. Don’t take anything he says as gospel.’
‘Hey. Remember I was a preacher once too.’
‘Not for long though, was it? Lay preacher. Until they found you out. Lay preacher alright; laying with all your girlfriends.’
Wilfred grinned sheepishly. His jaw moved constantly, as if chewing.
‘I can see them now,’ said Nita, turning her head from side to side.
‘Watch out, Tilly, he’ll stick out his false teeth d’rectly,’ said Kathy. And Wilfred did just that: a small bridge of teeth came between his lips, retreated again.
‘Ha!’
‘You’ll see, Tilly, we Wirlomin we’re lovely people, once you get to know us.’ She stared at Wilfred. ‘Most of us anyway.’
‘We all got our problems.’
‘Our little weaknesses.’
‘Secrets.’
Hidden things.
Another voice. ‘Boss wants us together.’ Beryl joined them, swinging her baseball bat. ‘Got this to make sure you all hurry up,’ she laughed. ‘I love to hurry you up.’ Noticing Tilly’s interest she said, ‘Left my shotgun behind, fuck it. Stick with me, Tilly, and you’ll be alright. Enforcer, that’s me. I’m the discipline and the backbone all these jelly-bones not got.’
‘Ha! So you say,’ said Kathy. The old people unfolded. Once upright, Wilfred gave a little jump.
‘Where’s Angela?’ said Nita, pushing Beryl into motion and grabbing at her sleeve so that she herself would know which way to go. Trees leaned into the space as they left; limbs stirred and reached after them; sap rose, and leaves whispered.
Tilly detoured to the ablution block. She had her bag on her shoulder; toiletries, pencil case, the little knife, toothpaste and breath freshener too. Already, it seemed to Tilly a slow day. She pined for her phone, but there was no reception. She sat in a toilet cubicle for a time. This supposed family of hers, so friendly. They didn’t even know her.
She thought she was gone a good time, and that she would enter the room – if at all – late and unnoticed. She planned to loiter by the door but, despite Beryl’s warning, they had waited for her.
A PILE OF STICKS
They moved along with the cloud shadows, Nita easily swinging the walking frame with the rhythm of her stride. It was a cool morning. Their destination was a single room, thinly walled, with an annexe of striped canvas and plastic and, to one side, a pale canvas wall or screen a couple of metres tall and perhaps three or four metres wide. At its further end was another screen made of recently gathered, and still green, bushes. The annexe failed to completely stop either the sunlight or the breeze which, shepherding clouds from the ocean, also moved this little crowd of thirty or so people, words bouncing between them like beads as they spilled into the room. Wilfred planted himself in one of a number of chairs haphazardly arranged near the back of the room. A corner of the room held an urn, cups, jars of coffee, teabags and sugar, an opened packet of biscuits, three deceased teabags in a saucer. Bags and coats were piled in another corner, and the walls held a picture of the Queen along with one of some seminal scoutmaster.
‘What, we in a scout hall . . .’
‘Bit of kiddy-fiddling.’
‘Shuttup stupid go on.’
Tilly stumbled. One of the twins was beside her, hand on her upper arm. Knuckles touched her breast. She pulled away, sat on a seat somewhere near Beryl and the baseball bat. The twin moved away. Did not sit with his brother.
They waited, ready. What next?
Kathy went to help Nita to her feet, but Nita brushed her hands away, and so Kathy stood and waited while the older woman levered herself up. The room fell silent. Someone poked a keyboard, and a series of images of people – including some of those in the room – was displayed on the screen and, a little fractured, on the wall behind. Were the images taken at a meeting? An exhibition? Some slow, warm party? A small group, arm in arm, beamed at the camera: Nita at the centre of other elderly individuals. Tilly saw one of the tw
ins behind the group, frozen in the act of moving out of the frame, and looking some years younger than either of them did today.
Nita had reached the front of the room. She stood beside the screen, peering at what to her must have been only a vaguely sensed block of light. She held an open hand toward it, and her face expressed struggle of some kind; was frustrated and determined as she searched for words. She turned to the small crowd, lifted her face as if smelling the air or straining to hear. They could hear the hum of the projector fan. The tiniest of fingers tapping on the roof. Tilly glanced out a window: misty rain, so fine she would not have expected to be able to hear it at all.
Nita leaned into her walking frame.
‘Some of you with us now like usual just for rehab, come along to dry out or straighten up or get in touch with family or whatever. Just like usual on these camps, but this time we got to prepare something for this Peace Plaque thing,’ she said. ‘Is that what they want? Peace Plaque? Peace Park?’
‘Park,’ said a voice.
‘Plaque,’ another.
‘Police Park?’
‘Please Plaque.’
‘Stop it. Don’t get distracted.’
Kathy moved to stand beside Nita, hands folded below her breasts. She was smiling, yet frowning a little too. Nita began to speak again, and Tilly assumed, from the very little she knew, that it was something in Aboriginal language. Noongar language. Her language, but not her mother’s tongue.
Tilly was weeping softly, seeping it seemed. It made no sense. Beryl put an arm around her.
Then Nita moved back to English.
‘This trip . . . Well, lot of us never been back to this area, not our parents and grandparents even, not since the killing. The old people been waiting for us I reckon. I hope they’re not disappointed. We’re all Noongars here. Wirlomin Noongar. Those that think they’re not, well we claim you. Alright?’ One of the older and fairer women blushed. Someone’s hands flapped at chin and breast.
‘Should be doing a Welcome to Country I suppose. I can’t but, because it’s your place here too – our place, unna? Even if most of us never been to this part before. Can’t help that. How could we? Our old people were first here, and here forever. We’re back here now.’
‘In the caravan park,’ said one of the twins.
A little ripple of laughter.
‘Trailer park, if you gunna be in the movies, Gerry.’
Nita turned to the voice.
In the silence the waves fell upon the sand just the other side of the peppermint trees; shush, shush, shush.
‘We black people in the hood chase all them wadjelas away, sweep the trash outta the trailer park.’
‘Shut the fuck up fuck you,’ another voice hissed. ‘Listen.’
Nita began talking again, nudged by a still beaming Kathy.
Shush. Shush. The cry of gulls, the deep sea swell, if Tilly and one or three others were to drift to sail to be out of her depth and die their bones would return picked clean, would fall whispering and pockmarked upon the beach. Bones worm-eaten, turning grey, eroding to grains of sand along the ridges of these wind-blown dunes, to be gusted away . . . To rise and fall again, to stay like those muted staves in the lines of barbed wire fencing.
‘Now, a minute’s silence for those that can’t be with us today,’ said Kathy, gesturing at the elderly people shown on the screen. ‘Sit in yourselves now, let yourself breathe and just be.’
Such a hippy, Kathy. Black hippy.
The breeze continued from the sea. The peppermint trees fidgeted. Tilly wondered who she was, running to hide all the time. Schoolgirl. Child. Outsider. The one who thought she was too good, but never good enough. This drug-addled fuck-up booted around by some shithead with all his drugs. Just a schoolgirl. She wished they could start talking. Moving. Doing things. She was going to run outside, slam the door. See who’d chase her . . .
Nita straightened herself. ‘Wilfred.’
Kathy stepped forward, looked around. ‘Where is he?’
‘He?’ The little crowd rippled, folded itself around the voice. ‘He? I’m here. Stuck.’ A couple of people helped Wilfred rise from the deep canvas chair which had sagged and folded, trapping him. Two young men – one of the twins and another Tilly hadn’t met – held him by the elbows, but he shook them off, and pretended to jog the last steps to the front of the room.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting, my Wirlomin . . .’ Everyone smiling. ‘For a minute there I thought I was one of those you all being quiet for. Took the life right out of me.’
He had their attention. They saw him notice the pink and grey cloth on his shoulder and, as if surprised, pluck it away. Folding it on the way to his pocket the cloth suddenly sprouted feathery wings, and there was the pink and grey galah he’d let fly when he boarded the bus. Struggling determinedly, he stuffed the squawking parrot into his pocket. It was cloth again. He gave a little resigned shrug and made brief eye contact with each of them, barely suppressing his glee.
‘Seriously but. Lot of our family, our little community trying to get clean; get off the gear, grog, whatever. Fix ourselves up.’
Nita said something in the old language, then, ‘What we’re gunna do . . .’
Wilfred continued, ‘Yeah, bit of language, some songs and stories. What the old people used to do. We all belong here. Make some instruments – artefacts, people like to say. Visit the old campsites. Re-introduce ourselves to the place. Massacre country, they say; lotta people reckon it’s taboo; bad spirits everywhere, you know, they –’ Here, he performed a quotation, using a high, whining voice: ‘“roll up their car windows while passing through Kepalup, and not even stop for food or petrol. The whole region has bad associations and an unwelcoming aura for them. It is a place for ghosts, not for living people . . .”’
He paused, then continued in his normal voice. ‘And now they’ve got this Peace Plaque . . . Park . . . thing. They grown up, been living here a while themselves. Sorry for the history, they say. Know it’s our country, our ancestral country. They’re not gunna give the land back, but know we’re the right people.’
One of the twins interrupted, ‘Least not that other mob, dunno nothing they . . .’
‘You the big culture man now?’
Wilfred waited for them to finish, went on, ‘They wanted Nita to speak at the opening, but she said no. Only a few survived that massacre. Lot of us now but. She wants a few of us to be up there, in front. To be a presence.’
Milton’s hoarse whisper came from the back of the room. ‘What about paintings, exhibition or something.’
‘Dunno, artefacts? A song?’
‘They want us to do something, the white people.’
Wilfred nodded. ‘Like to give ’em something good. Not what they expect but, not just pat themselves on the back and a little nod for us. Like to sit ’em back in their socks . . .’
‘Up to us to show them what we are, who we are, how we link up to before the town, before the massacre and all that,’ added Milton. ‘Make it a Wirlomin place again.’
They stopped speaking.
Some of the little group, now and in the future, the drunks and addicts, the old people and their carers and all those otherwise lost but wanting to help and our old people in the past too, were wiping their cheeks. A general weeping had begun, it seemed, at just one fissure and then spread. The few children and teenagers wrinkled their brows and tried not to see the adults crying, wringing their hands, wriggling in their seats. Tears, tears rising around their feet and flowing down the steps.
Tears seeping, weeping, moving to the sea.
Shush. Shush.
Nita held herself as erect as a stooped and drying body will allow, nourished maybe by the unseen tears at her feet. Kathy touched her arm so she turned to face most of the others. ‘I lost one brother this month, another brother not so long ago
. Milton, he’s not gunna be long.’
‘Still here, Nita.’
She lifted her face to the sound of his voice. The old man sat in a chair against the wall, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. He was staring at the floor, and shook his head ruefully.
‘Our sisters, our brothers, most of our cousins, they’ve all gone now. Hard workers, all of them. Slaves maybe. But you lot . . .’
‘Oh, Nan . . .’ someone behind Tilly started.
‘You listen to me.’ Nita’s anger gave her energy. She straightened, stood a little taller even. Kathy put her arm around her, and her eyes shone with tears, a smile twisted her face. No tears in Nita’s eyes.
‘Hard workers. Hard times they been through. None of you know the things we learnt when we were kids. Noongar things, proper Noongar things, not museum made-up stuff. And not this . . .’ She mimed drinking, she mimed injecting her forearm, then dropped her arms to her sides and shook her head almost imperceptibly. ‘Maybe we coulda done things different. When I went to school I only knew Noongar talk, and they called me heathen. Give me this.’ She mimed being caned. ‘Punished and made ashamed. And scrabbling around the boots of the white man.’ She put her head to one side. ‘But there’s good white people too, you know that . . .’
She seemed to lose her train of thought. She dropped her head and shuffled her feet, resettling. Listened. Raised her head and spoke again. ‘Not so much bush tucker now, not so much bush either. We can’t go all the places never again. But still got the lingo, unna? We found things written up that some of them used to tell when I was a kiddie, and I’m coming up to ninety now.’ She cupped her hand to one ear. ‘You still out there listening?’
‘Yeah, Nan, we listening.’
‘We Wirlomin,’ someone said.
‘We Wirlomin,’ whispered here and there in the room. The audience held her blind gaze, wanting to communicate that way.
‘Gotta hear you. Coming up ninety now and not gunna be here much longer,’ she said.
Kathy, still with her arms around Nita, said, ‘Only get together at funerals these days, but we . . . Gerry?’ Kathy turned. The light had shifted; it must’ve been a cloud moved from the face of the sun, because for that moment their figures seemed shadows on a screen, moving toward one another and gathering at the front of the room. Then the light was as before, and one of the twins who had been leaning against the wall by the window beside Milton joined the two women at the front of the room. He ran a hand across his face, pulled down his dark glasses. Weeping?