by Kim Scott
Tilly’s ankles seemed to have fused, and the soles of her feet curved around a planet grown so tiny or herself so large that her head went orbiting through the stars even as the world so slowly pivoted beneath her.
Tilly did indeed see the emu in the sky, caught for a moment as if in some slow cartwheel, but then it was gone and only the cold and glittering stars remained. She was as before, her own shrivelled self.
Here came the partial moon rising.
*
Gerry asked Tilly, ‘You got blankets and that?’
‘Yeah, sleeping bag.’
‘Kathy or Beryl will help sort a place to sleep.’
They were walking past the bus, and Tilly went to the bus door and, in the dark, leaned against its cold glass. ‘Could sleep here,’ she said. The door opened suddenly, and she flinched at a steadying hand on her shoulder.
‘Sorry,’ he said. Was it Gerald? ‘Come with me, Tilly, I’ll find where they got you.’
She followed, a few steps behind.
He stopped, turned. ‘You right?’
‘Yes,’ she said, curtly.
He called at the open door of an annexe, softly. ‘Aunty Kathy? It’s me, Gerald.’
‘Hang on.’
‘Got Tilly with me, Jim’s girl.’
Kathy was in tracksuit and long gown, grey hair spilling wide and down past her shoulders.
‘Tilly, love.’
Tilly found herself in the older woman’s arms, held. She leaned into her, despite herself.
The twin slipped away.
‘Got you a bed here.’
A single bed, blankets tucked and sheets folded back. A pastel pillow. On mattresses on the floor around it, bodies were curled and deep asleep already.
She inserted herself into the blankets of a small folder bed, but she could not sleep. She listened to the older women shifting in their beds, breathing. Pulled her blankets back. The school logo on her tracksuit chastened by the night. Tilly folded the thin mattress and blankets and went to the bus. Once inside, she locked the doors, stretched out in the aisle and slept with the bus seats around her like guardians.
She dreamed of Kokanarup, but this time she travelled alone. The same gravel road breaking from the highway, the same trees, but this time closer, more densely bunched, looming as if in the headlights of a car (but there were no headlights, and no car). They reached for her from each side. Tilly glimpsed faces in the gloom, and in her dream she moved upright, gliding, her feet trailing behind. The road curved right and left, rose and fell. Never a long view. A narrow path was opening before her, and then the grave. A small boom gate rose at her approach, admitted her inside its picket-fence enclosure. She shied away from the headstone, and suddenly all was parkland: copses of trees, the walking easy. Footsteps crunched in burnt, brittle-crusted earth. She smelled the old, sharp smoke. But they were not her footsteps; she was gliding still. Then it was soft grass, green and newly sprouting.
Tilly felt the cool earth under the soles of her feet. She was motionless, might have been a statue or a puppet, discarded. Snakes slowly curled around her ankles as, unperturbed, she studied the old house from a little distance down the slope. A house of bone with hooded, blank windows, and an iron roof raking down very low, its corrugations making fine lines of inky black and moonlight silver.
There was someone beside her. She turned, and turned, but the companion stayed just beyond her vision, must have taken a step each time she twisted. She heard joints clicking, perhaps bones creaking. Someone old, she thought in her dream, but still sprightly enough to escape my gaze.
Tilly woke, and it was dawn. Closed her eyes. Opened them a second time, and the sun was bright in her face. Soft conversation. Fire and tobacco smoke. Tilly felt unusually refreshed, but for that dark star within; that constant, central shrinking; that memory and shame she must fight to extinguish.
WHAT WAS LEFT
Light expanding, a new day: there was a fire, with two small walls of brick each side and a metal grate across the top. Daylight growing. Thin fire smoke becoming blue. The old people sat around the fire, a great many of them, looking into its centre.
Ping of a microwave.
A crow.
A cough.
An outboard motor grumbling across the water.
The sound of waves.
Caravan park guests moved to and from the ablution block. A woman with her towel across her shoulder. Hands in front of her, like a kangaroo, holding her toiletries.
The moon in the sky fading to a piece of bone, to less than that; a shred of skin.
Thin stem of smoke, rising. The fire hissed, crackled, its many small tongues licking the wood; hummed like some animal relaxed and breathing in the throat. A lot of white ash for so young a fire. Ash rose at any footstep, and then settled again, claiming.
‘Boy still on holiday?’
‘Do him good in a way.’
A prison was named.
‘Yeah. They still doing those classes, Jim was showing them?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Jim was teaching them?’
‘But he never knew nothing special, did he?’
‘Old girl. Milton. His dad made some tapes too. Some old paperwork, from way back I think. They were doing same sort of thing inside like what we doing here.’
Wilfred pointed with his lips at Nita.
Nita felt their attention, turned her blind face to them; it was as if she smelled their intention, heard them thinking.
‘Well they got plenty of time in there, unna.’
‘Wordlists and language. Paper and computer. Family trees. History and policy and that, when we not allowed in town, and the kids dying like flies. Stand in a shop and wait until last. But I don’t think they spend too much time on that; plenty still to tell them all that stuff. They mostly do language.’
‘Heard they got a prison officer helping them.’
‘What we doing today?’
‘Stuff.’
‘Better get everybody up.’
‘He up, himself?’
‘Oh yeah, he up himself alright.’
‘Ha. I mean awake, out of bed.’
‘Well, this one is.’
‘She Jim’s girl?’
‘Yeah.’
‘She know about her mum and dad?’
‘Just met her dad. Only ever known him inside.’
‘Shame.’
‘Know about him and her mum?’
‘Dunno. Ask her, why don’t ya?’
‘What we doing today? Going upriver?’
‘That her?’
‘Tilly? Yeah.’
*
At a distance, Tilly smiled at them. No one would have seen the smile. She was walking from the showers. Wearing long sleeves, leggings. Gave a wave, the movement mainly from the elbow, the upper arm close to the body. Hand moved away, then snapped back like it was held by a rubber band. Her hand flapped like something trying to escape.
Tilly had been to the beach in the early morning and, entering the thick copse of peppermint trees, her feet following the sand trail that wound raw between them, she’d realised there was someone behind her. Unseen, she stepped among the trees. Hid. Two people walked by. Husband and wife, she guessed. Old biddies. She followed them, then. They never even knew.
Yesterday’s footprints dimpled the fine white sand. Seaweed in squiggly lines, brushed back and heaped a little at the sea’s edge. The lacy edge of water went to and from. The man and woman went onto the rocky groyne, unspooled their hand lines over an unsettled, blue-grey sea. The sea shifted about; was ruffled by a breeze.
Walking back, Tilly crushed a peppermint leaf. Cupped her hands around her nose and mouth and breathed in deep.
Old man and wife together, like they were old friends. Fuck them the fuckers fu
ck them all.
Tilly began to jog. Saw the old people sitting by the fire. No escape; no privacy for her anywhere.
*
Gerald was awake. Was he?
‘Gerrard?’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Fuck you too.’
‘Shuttup you two.’ A third voice.
There were four in the room. Two bunk beds. Another two beds in the room with the TV. Gerald saw that his brother had undressed. Sometimes, men sharing a room like this slept clothed. He put on his shoes and went out the door.
A little dome tent floated on a scrap of lawn beyond the veranda. Tent was zipped, someone still sleeping.
A thin column of smoke grew at the centre of a little group of people, shifted like a friend with each movement, and their cigarettes seemed as if they were weaving, repairing the column between them.
The girl. Tilly. Not exactly marching from the ablution block, but very nearly. Limbs moving very stiffly. Clutching herself. Maybe realising this, she seemed to suddenly concentrate on letting her arms swing free.
Gerald found a private spot where he could see anyone approaching. Took out a little pipe, fondled it. Nothing to burn; he admired his own willpower. He went along a little path, the white sand like a scar. His feet stepped between tufts of grass, droppings, marks in the sand left by . . . He let the old names move through him.
Yesterday, just saying the words. Tilly had believed in him.
The sun broke its link with the horizon. The sea breathed again, drinking the light, you’d think. Leaves turned on their vertical axis.
Gerald went up on his toes, swung a leg over the fencing wire. Blossoming from the trees the other side, he saw Tilly . . . On her way to the ablution block again.
She must really like that place.
*
They were going to visit some places along the river. There’d be the bus, and one car. Come with us, Tilly, Nita said. Since they’d got to the camp, Angela had strayed away from Nita. One of the Gerrys – Gerald, Tilly thought, same clothes as yesterday – was with her, jangling the car keys. The other twin arrived with Wilfred.
‘River mouth?’
Although in this part of the world, river mouth is a misnomer. An ancient coastal plain, the rivers are small and meandering and have distributaries more than tributaries. In flood, some places just spread shallow over a vast area. On occasion, at such a time, they will break through the sandbar blocking them from the sea, the waves rush to meet them and there is such a surging, salt water meeting fresh, a turbulent mingling, and fish moving from ocean upstream and vice versa too.
‘Fish move from ocean upstream,’ said Wilfred. ‘True. I seen big fat bream in the tiniest of river pools. Wiggle your finger, and they’ll jump out of the water into your campfire.’
All that life right there and you’d never think it.
*
The little bitumen road became gravel, became sand, then they were driving the long sandy curve of the beach toward a granite headland and a little island a short distance from its tip, like some sort of punctuation point. The beach widened, and the sand squealed. On their right, the turquoise, wind-ruffled sea folded and bowed at its edge, again and again.
‘Used to light a fire here, and my daddy sing the dolphins in, bring the salmon for us. Leap onto the beach for you.’
The beach was hard, and Gerry drove fast. The car rose over small undulations, lurched when it reached softer sand in between.
‘Easy, Gerry,’ said Wilfred.
The driver laughed.
‘Slow down, Gerry,’ Nita said.
‘It’s alright, Gran. Trust me.’
The old woman turned, her blind eyes faced the driver. ‘You in the back, Gerry?’ The twin beside Tilly said something in the old tongue, then, ‘I am, Gran.’
Nita opened her door. ‘Slow down, or I’m getting out.’ The wind rushed into the car, it tore at her hair; they could hear the tyres in the sand. ‘Stop the car, Gerrard, or I’m getting out.’
The car kept on.
Nita swung her legs around, both her feet by the door.
The driver swore, slowed. He stopped the car.
‘Change drivers,’ the old woman said. She slammed her door shut as the driver got out. The twin next to Tilly and Wilfred opened his door and the two men pushed at one another on the sand for a few moments.
‘Move over, Tilly,’ said Wilfred. He now sat between her and the twin, Gerrard. The persistent sea reached toward them, and became silent again as the doors closed, the car moved off slowly, the windows were again sealed.
*
They drove close to the sea, on the harder sand, and started to make a wide curve back toward the dunes.
‘We nearly there, Wilf?’ Nita said.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Feed it.’
‘Give it a kick in the guts,’ the old woman muttered, and as they made a wide arc toward the dunes sand sprayed from the tyres like a breaking wave. The vehicle slid and bucked, the motor roaring like some great beast as it shook itself and bounded up a mound of soft, white sand. Tilly was terrified, thrilled.
The going was easy again, a sand track winding through the old, shaggy dunes. They approached some paperbarks, crowding at this edge of where the dark water paused, pooled, consolidated itself. Skirted the flaking trees that leaned together in conspiratorial shade and ankle-deep shallows.
Then, a thick mass of weeds and rushes.
‘The springs. Old people would’ve burnt to get to them I guess. Snakes everywhere through there.’ Just the other side of this expanse of rushes, a little hill with a humble building on top.
‘Café. You can see a bit of the spring, the water itself, from up there.’ Unseen, water continued to issue from the earth at the base of the hill beneath their feet, ran gurgling through rocks and reeds and mud to the brimming pool. But they had no time to stop, no time for the café or the restful river pool, not now, because they needed to be further inland to meet the others.
Driving, driving, and although Tilly had been long awake and had moved through tea and coffee and gossip around the campfire, through breakfast and cleaning and discussion about the coming day, visited places along the river and dozed in the car, inexpressibly tired from who knew what cause, Tilly only really came awake – felt she came to consciousness – after they had been driving for quite some time.
They drove away from the coast where the wind shifted restlessly, and the jostled ocean tilted its many facets away. Seated behind the driver and Nan Nita, Tilly instead imagined herself in a chariot – this car made invisible. Better yet, in a litter, and carried on strong shoulders back to her people. She leaned back and jiggled the foot of one leg, compelled by a slow wind from the frozen south and supported by sisters and brothers and cousins and . . . by angels, since they were surely flying.
‘This place, Tilly, where we are going,’ Gerry began, but Tilly was not listening, and he let the words die. No one took up the conversation.
Seen through the insect-smeared windscreen: scarcely undulating, dry and bleached ground; fence lines beside the road and dividing, at wide intervals, a mostly bare landscape. A fence is just the posts holding hands, thought Tilly, and such long arms between them. Trees grew in scattered clumps, in eroding crevices and gullies, in the corner of fences and on the rocky crowns of worn hillocks. Trees grew among spills of irregularly shaped rocks; slabs, blocks, flattened and broken spheres. Trees, isolated at the roadside, flailed their limbs and tossed their crowns as the car rushed past.
‘Look, daytime moon.’
Tilly ducked her head to see beyond the window frame and out to where the old woman was pointing: a partial and trembling moon, forever dissolving in that vast blue.
‘Fingernail moon.’
Nita’s quivering finger pointed, the hooked nail could’ve been bone or i
vory or that same moonstuff itself.
How could Nan Nita – blind old woman that she was – even see the moon or know where to point?
Nita laughed. ‘What, you think I’m that blind?’
Gerry only shrugged in response to Tilly’s expression of enquiry. The old woman tilted her face back, and the curve of her large sunglasses made a protective prow, a Cyclops visor.
‘’Course I know where the moon is; still had my eyes when I was older than you lot. I know where the moon is.’
‘Kaya,’ said Tilly, using one of the words from yesterday’s language workshop.
‘This place we’re going, where I’m taking you, best go there when the moon’s in the sky. Moon in the rock too, like drawn there. My daddy showed me when I was a little girl and now I show you.’
They pulled up on the road verge. The bus was already there.
Look how far they had come already.
‘Our old people here.’
The wind was cold, and dry. The road, no longer so black or smooth as when seen at speed, was textured with small stones. Rough timber fence posts and the horizontal strands of wire might have made a crude musical stave for the call of a crow. The plants around them rattled like small bones shaken together, and grains of sand hissed.
‘Show you this, Tilly. Kangaroo and the moon story, in the rock up here.’ He gave her the old names for kangaroo, for moon.
The old woman threw her walking frame over the fence, while Gerry held the wires low enough for her to step through.
Gerry reclaimed the walking frame, handed it to Nita and became her guide as the old woman, thrusting the walking frame into the crusted sand, began her long journey up the bristling, stubbled slope. The others joined her, moving barely an arm-span apart and so slowly they might have been a search party.
A small bulldozer squatted a hundred metres away among soil and rocks still dark and damp from having so recently been uprooted and laid out beneath a sun and stars they had never known.
Tilly saw the old man – Pa Wilfred – veering toward that very place. On an impulse she followed him.