by Molly Murn
Maringani fingers the pigface flowers and among the leaves she finds a small tear-shaped succulent fruit. She plucks it and takes a bite, placing the remaining piece in William’s palm. Nganangi.
He feels lit up inside, like she’s blown on a flame to make it catch. And for a moment he is very still, to cradle the warmth spreading through him.
William turns the fruit in his hands, brushes it along his lips and takes a small taste. It is sweet and sticky like a fig. Wallen has those, too. He smiles at her and attempts the word for it. She laughs and he notices for the first time how large and white her front teeth are.
Nga … na … ngi. She mouths the word slowly and deliberately.
Watching carefully the way she puts her tongue right at the back of her mouth to make the ‘ng’ sound, William tries to pronounce the word again—Na … na … nee.
She giggles again, and this time gestures for him to copy each sound with her. The way he has to move his tongue feels very strange. He is used to talking at the front of his mouth, not with his tongue back near his throat. It is a useless slab, his tongue, but he likes the sound of her voice when she speaks. It is just as he imagined it, uneven and song-like.
He keeps practising the word for pigface until, finally, the two of them say together, nganangi.
The girl nods vigorously with approval and they try more words together. She teaches him how to say her name, Maringani, and he shows her how to say William and damper. He likes the lilting way she says his name. Weellum.
Anderson’s voice comes cracking through the scrub, William—get here, scattering the delicate covering, William imagines they’ve built around themselves.
Scrambling to his feet, William hides the berries and seeds Maringani left him, putting them under the crate, aside from one berry, which he pops into his mouth with a flourish.
Munthari, she whispers to him.
Moontaree, moontaree, Maringani. Maringani, Maringani, nananee, William repeats as he speeds recklessly through the scrub, knowing he has probably spent too much time away from the camp and that his father will be stalking back and forth, irritated and long ready to go out sealing again.
Maringani sits with the weaving in her lap, stitching quietly—a sitting mat, knowing that soon she will help Emue and Poll to scrape the sealskins. The older women are spreading out the new skins and shooing away the festoons of flies with leafy branches. Maringani still cannot get used to the sharp flesh smell. She traces her finger around the spiral of her weaving and then tucks in the end of one rush and gets up to place the weaving inside the wurlie. She’ll work in the next rush later—after the scraping is done. The mat she’s weaving is for the kringkari boy. He seems to not have all that he needs, something for himself, like the men do. Maringani squats in front of a skin and rummages for the flint scraper in her sister basket. Emue presses something cold to Maringani’s arm and smiles so wide the bridge of her nose crinkles. Maringani laughs. She knows Emue is very pleased with her new scraper. Maringani holds it up to the light. Even though it’s black the light gets through, like when you’re swimming and looking up to the surface. The day before, Emue smashed one of Anderson’s ale bottles and fashioned its heavy base, keeping most of it smooth to sit comfortably in her palm, but chipping the ragged edge until it was knife-sharp. Emue points with her lips. Try it.
Maringani looks to the bloody skin, its two sides unfolded like great wings. She scrapes down from the rent where the fin used to be with Emue’s new tool, cutting through to the underlayer with the sharp edge. The fat and sinew and blood clots pull away easily. She keeps going and can get just the right angle so as not to tear the skin. The scraper is so sharp and solid. Soon Emue folds her hand around Maringani’s sticky slippery one and pries the scraper from her. Maringani giggles and gently nudges against Emue’s upper arm until she unbalances and they both fall over. Poll shakes her head and giggles too. With her own scraper, Maringani has to work much more slowly to protect the skin. Poll and Emue whisper between themselves. And Maringani agrees, they can seal better without the men and their loud voices and loud boats because the seals are not frightened of Emue and Poll. But the men need many more skins out of one haul.
The flies sit thickly on the mess of blood clots and thready sinew, and Maringani drops a branch over the whole lot. The three skins the women are working on start to show their fragile pink undersides and the sun warms the skins as if they are alive. In the distance, Maringani sees the boy crouching at the shoreline. The water shines silver behind him. Is he digging for kuti? She cannot tell. She wonders again who he belongs to. He seems to be of both the sea and the land like the seals. Seal brother. He is bright to look at and bright in her thoughts.
William finds himself down at the women’s spot most evenings. There is a well-trodden track running between the camps. The women have set up their wurlies just on the other side of the shallow part of the river to be out of sight from the men. He thinks this clever. His father and Everitt have tried every which way to keep the women permanently at their own huts, but the women will do their own thing. He likes listening to their voices collide and overlap and then fall abruptly away into silence; he has noticed a kind of stop-start rhythm to their stories that is hypnotic. When Anderson isn’t around it is Emue who quietly presses native cherry, panpandi, into William’s hands, or puts aside mutton bird eggs for him, or gives him the best piece of meat from the cook up, or doubles in laughter when he attempts to learn their words, and then strokes her hand over his face in one motion when his cheeks are all aflame.
If the women are with the men, then it is just he and Maringani and half a dozen skinny dogs lazing by the fire. William and Maringani compare words for everything, and to William it feels like his world is being renamed in colour, and sound, and texture, more vivid than it ever was before. And not just the tangible elements that make up his world, but all the quivers of things unseen, that have lately come to settle and fly apart, then resettle in the spaces between everything he thought he knew and Maringani’s way of seeing. William knows that the stars serve a similar purpose for him as they do for Maringani, as a navigational tool and a way of measuring time, but some stars seem vastly more significant to her than others. In particular the Pleiades, which Maringani calls Muntjingarr, seem to be very important. Maringani won’t swim until the cluster has started to rise in the night sky in summer. William can tell, by the quietness in her voice when she talks of the story of Muntjingarr, that it isn’t just the stars themselves but it is the story of the stars that is precious.
Maringani has a story for everything. She has stories about the kuti, nuts and berries she finds, as well as about the birds, lizards and whales. She has explained that the grass tree, or blackboy, or yacca, with its long, jutting stem and cascading leaves is the whale spurting water from its blowhole. It seems there is symmetry between things on the land and things in the ocean or rivers. There is a connection between the whale—kondoli, and the echidna—kateraiperi, because they both take their food with their tongue. Whale is law of the sea. Echidna is law of the land. William has always thought of stories as something fanciful, something you told to pass the time out at sea or by the fire after drinking rum like the men did. For Maringani, he realises, stories are how she understands.
Anderson watches as Emue makes an incision at the bottom of the wallaby’s tail, slicing the skin along its length, over its belly and to the head. She then cuts the underpart of the wallaby across its body from one inner leg to the other and again from inner arm to inner arm and then across its neck. Once the cuts have been made, Poll helps Emue scrape the skin from the wallaby’s flesh. He notices Emue’s new scraper. Resourceful, he thinks.
Emue separates the skin into two smaller squares and then stretches and pegs out the skin with the fur side down. She scoops hot ash onto a flat stone that is taken from a smouldering fire attended by Poll, who is rolling the glowing coals to one side to uncover the ash. Emue smothers the pegged-out skins with the as
h to dry out all the moisture.
Maringani, calls out Emue, the sound of her voice flat against the wind.
In the shallow banks on the opposite side from Emue and Anderson, the sleek, wet heads of Maringani and William poke out of the water like seals. They lie on their stomachs, churning up the sand with their restless feet, keeping their shoulders submerged. The ease with which William frolics with the native child unsettles Anderson, not only because he feels William is behaving more and more like a black, and what would Beatrice think, but because just sometimes he wishes Emue would smile at him the way Maringani smiles at William.
Son, stop yer cavortin’ now and get yer jobs done. Yer been shirkin’ of late. There’s wood that needs choppin’ and the cutter needs to be made ready for tomorrah, Anderson says as he sharpens his knife with long, swift strokes against a large piece of flint.
Comin’, William replies, before taking in a big lungful of air and going under.
Emue calls out again to Maringani, who at that moment dips her head under and doesn’t hear. Once she emerges, William nudges her and nods in the direction of Emue and Anderson. Maringani flips over onto her back, breathless. With one swift arm gesture, Emue beckons her daughter to return to camp.
William, stop yer breath-holdin’ contest or whatever it is yer doin’ and get out of there now. We’ve a big day tomorrah.
Anderson watches Maringani and William spring out of the water, their feet squeaking in the powdery sand as they race towards him and Emue. Maringani tears ahead and drops herself in beside Emue, who cuffs her gently on the head and frowns at the sizzle of water splashing from Maringani’s hair onto the coals. Anderson can’t help but notice the way Emue and Maringani move in unison. The same turn of the wrist, the same deliberate step.
See ya tomorrah, Mari, William shouts over his shoulder, as he pelts past Anderson, flinging him with sand, away to the men’s camp.
Will, plenty of wood do yer hear? We is celebratin’ this night, Anderson calls after him, thinking with pleasure of the unopened barrel of rum, like molten gold, sitting patiently in the hut.
We did good with the skins this morning, Emue, very good. We be sellin’ another ’undred in no time at all at this rate. You gins are mighty fine at this skin venture o’ ours, mighty fine, Anderson says as he kisses Emue on the top of the head. This life here, finding our own way, sure does beat life aboard a ship. Enslaved to captains. And lays. Choosing to stay was the best thing I ever did. Sometimes, Anderson feels almost kingly. We’re doing just fine, he thinks to himself. No one to bother us. The sky endless, the air sweet as the morning.
Emue murmurs something to Poll as she spreads more ash over the skin, and Anderson grins at them with a sudden rush of appreciation and pride for their quiet diligence.
I’ll see you tonight, Emue, my Polecat, he says as he turns and whistles up the tracks, altogether missing Emue and Poll mimicking the swagger in his voice while convulsing with laughter.
Stokes Bay Road
Pearl leans back on the vinyl seat and closes her eyes. The air through the open window is grassy sweet and cool. The sky is beginning to hunker down as bright clouds mass. She can feel the scrub, preparing for rain. She wants to stay put. To keep on arriving here is too hard without Nell, but she also can’t bear to go inside. It takes nothing for Pearl to clamber into the driver’s seat and start the ute. Nico and Lewis have gone inside, and the keys still hang in the ignition, invitingly. As Pearl drives away from Nell’s house there are the first spatters of rain like big dusty coins on the windscreen. Her phone jolts on the dash. A message from Nico: What the fuck? Where are you going? She keeps driving on through the paddock gate and out. When she hits the road she feels spacious again—like she can breathe. And then Nico’s calling. She doesn’t answer, just lets the phone spiral until it hits the floor. She slows the car and reaches down to get it. Nico’s going nuts. What are you even doing? This is Lucy now. Pearl pulls over and punches out a reply, first to Nico, I’m sorry. I can’t deal with Diana. Or Lucy. The kids. Taking a drive. See you in bed? Won’t be long xxx And then to Lucy: Can you chill N out pls? Open some wine. Make conversation? I just need an hour P x
She fiddles with the radio knob again but there’s only static, so she switches it off and opens up the heater vents instead. Soon the night will descend purple and complete like a shroud, but now the moon is rising like a shard and only the roads and the paddocks and the sky can hold all that pours from her. She thinks of the Leonard Cohen song about the night coming on, and sings it throatily. I’ll have to dig out my box of tapes, she thinks, if I’m going to keep driving this thing everywhere. She could do this. Live on the island and drive utes. You’re nuts! Don’t crash—pings in from Lucy.
You mean can’t deal with me? Fuck Pearl. Yep, see you in bed then. Worried! Nxxx Pearl presses the power button off and chucks the phone onto the passenger seat. The rain begins smearing down the windscreen and the trees bend low, and on the silhouette of the hill are the humped backs of kangaroos like sentinels watching the day cross over. She is not really at all sure where she is going, but it is warm in the cabin and the headlights cut a path before her that is clear and purposeful.
She turns off onto the East West road, which cuts across the middle of the island, as she zigzags her way down to the south coast. I guess this is going to be a long drive, she thinks, and reaches into her pocket. Her fingers curl around Nell’s black glass scraping tool. She’d swiped it this morning from Nell’s green box before driving to pick up Nico and Lewis from the ferry. She didn’t really know why she had, except that Diana was hovering around it protectively yesterday, and more importantly, it used to fit Nell’s hand perfectly, so absurdly, Pearl feels closer to Nell when she holds it. It is also satisfyingly cool to the touch and she needs these cold sparks of ignition. She had intended to return it today, but here she is driving aimlessly towards the south coast instead. Lightning illuminates the outside world at brief searing intervals. A steady rumble of thunder gathers momentum and Pearl thinks of a slow train trundling alongside the ute. The trees shake their heads in fury as if to say go home go home go home. But still she doesn’t turn back.
When the lightning begins cracking in front of the windscreen she pulls over. The tyres sluice in the dirty water at the edge of the road. The rain is coming fast and the wipers can’t keep up. I’ll just wait for the rain to ease, she thinks, and then keep going. But where am I going? She reaches for her phone and turns it back on. Eight missed calls from Nico and one from Diana, and barely a cell of reception. I’m okay. Closer to the south coast now, so not going to turn back. I’ll head to Caroline’s at Murray Lagoon. Phone nearly dead. Sorry xx She presses send and hopes Nico will get it. Yes, this is the best plan, she decides. I can’t keep sitting here, in this deluge. I’ll be hemmed in. Just another half hour and I’ll be at Caroline’s and Uncle Jim will be there and all this is making sense now. But slowly the road is being swallowed up with water, and all the wipers can manage is to briefly reveal a ghostly way forward. When the trees light up, their naked bright trunks leave an imprint as if pasted on the glass in front of her. But even through the rain she can smell that she’s getting closer to the coast. She scours the edge of the road for the turn-off to Murray Lagoon, and realises her heart is racing. I can’t miss this. And then as she turns onto the smudged white road, past the row of rusty letterboxes, it is a relief to be off the corrugated track and now that she’s not jolting up and down so much that her ears itch, a memory of Nell descends. Or really it’s of Diana, and it’s something to do with all of this water and the relentless droning sound of it.
She is sitting at the kitchen table, home again with Diana and David, after leaving the island earlier that morning, and the bath is running. And she hates the back and forth. She hates the way Diana throws all Pearl’s dusty island things in the washing machine sort of contemptuously, and says, Does Nell not know how to wash clothes? Does she always have to let you ruin your best shoes? Does
she ever ever make you wear sunblock? Pearl scratches at her peeling nose.
Don’t scratch it.
We went to Red Cliffs yesterday and we covered ourselves completely in mud and pretended we were at a French spa. Marian looked like a hippo, though.
And that’s when you got burnt?
No, not then. Have you been there?
Diana sighs and crashes the dishes into the sink. Oh, I can’t remember. Go and turn the bath off.
Pearl submerges in the steaming water right to the lobes of her ears. The bathroom here is better than at Nell’s; Diana is right about that. The tiles are art-deco green and the sink is curved like a Cadillac. And the red dirt from Red Cliffs starts forming a deliciously startling rim around the edge of the tub. Diana will hate that. Pearl rubs at it with her toe, and can just make out Diana talking to David in the kitchen.
It’s impossible, this situation.
Not impossible, just difficult.
You would say that. Fuck.
Do you like this colour on me?
You know I hate maroon. On you. What should I do?
About maroon?
For fuck’s sake!
Pearl slides completely under and tries to pin herself down, but her knees bob up, and then her buttocks lift as if pushed from underneath and her flat nipples peek out like little depressions on a white expanse. Her bathers have left an imprint, or the opposite of an imprint, in their exact shape, and she rolls over to inspect her very white bum.
You can’t stop the visits.
I can if Nell won’t communicate with me.
As long as Pearl wants it, you can’t stop it.
Shouldn’t I be protecting her?
From what?
David, you’ve cut the onions too thick again.
Pearl remembers yanking the plug out and slicing her thumb on its metal edge. Blood unfurled in the water like little red butterflies opening and pirouetting. She clenched her thumb and swooned back down in the water, her body becoming heavy and lumpen as the water gurgled away. Diana found her shivering in just a pool of grit from Red Cliffs.