We'll Stand In That Place and other stories

by Michelle Cahill

  She got up and looked out the window into the grey, straight sheet of rain. It obscured the world and made it opaque. The forest in front was a blur, barely decipherable, a sublime darkness, waiting to suck up the house and everyone in it. Lily knew it was empty, devoid of animal life, yet it looked so foreboding, as if it had a life of its own and was going to exact its revenge on the world. ‘We should’ve built an ark,’ she said to Jase, her silent husband. ‘Well, at least we won’t go thirsty. Do you think it will ever stop raining?’ The silence irritated her and sometimes she wanted to get in the car and leave, head north, maybe Broome. She wanted to see the sun, not a watered down, insipid glow through grey clouds. She longed for warm skin and the smell of coconut oil and gentle waves that lap tenderly along the shore.

  It had rained constantly for three months, the dam near the house was overflowing and for the first time ever the winter creek had burst its banks. The house was still dry and she was thankful she’d moved the wood under the veranda. ‘I’m going out for a walk. I’ll be back soon.’ She sang as she walked through the rain. It was the only time she didn’t feel alone. Somehow, being part of the outside world comforted her and made her believe she belonged. Too often it seemed like the world was a waterfall and she was afraid that one day she would get washed off. The bush was silent; if there were any animals left, they were sheltering from the rain. She longed to see some birds, to hear the beat of their wings and their cries of joy as they flew overhead. Grey clouds hung lifelessly. They had nowhere to go; the world was dead. She walked to the dam and watched as it flowed over the bank and into the bush behind; a deluge of rain and white clay gushing over tea tree and scrub, creating its own river bed. The movement hypnotised her and soon she was oblivious to the world around her and sucked into distant memories of happiness.

  * * *

  ‘I’m finished,’ shouted Seth and he bolted out the door. Harry was close on his heels, out to conquer the world. One black haired, one blond, it was hard to believe they were brothers; they were so different. Their laughter filled the bush around the home, scaring birds into flight. ‘What are you doing?’ Lily asked, when she found them, barefoot sitting in a giant puddle left over from the winter rains. ‘Making rivers,’ said Seth. ‘Catching tadpoles,’ said Harry. Lily crouched down, she could see the little black tadpoles trying to swim up river and escape their giant captors. The water vibrated with their efforts, but they didn’t get very far. ‘I think they’re trying to escape,’ she said.

  ‘No, they’re happy. See, they’re wagging their tails,’ said Harry, not even bothering to look at her as he dug the black soil with his hands. His little fingers were fat and the nails crusted with dirt. ‘We’re going to make a dam, and a special home so the tadpoles can live there and then turn into frogs,’ said Seth.

  ‘You need to put your hats on or you’ll get burnt.’

  ‘Not yet, we have to finish the dam,’ said Seth. Harry nodded in agreement, always loyal to his older brother.

  * * *

  ‘We didn’t know what happiness was. Always rushing and wanting more,’ said Lily. ‘Where are you going river? Will you take me with you?’ The water gushed and swirled away, leaving her questions unanswered. She turned and looked back at the house. She could see the grey smoke rise, before it blended into the wet sky and disappeared. She wanted to keep on walking until she collapsed from exhaustion. Returning to the house was always difficult. Her prayers were never answered, the house was empty, her life was a void and the monotonous dance of the rain couldn’t fill the silence.

  ‘What shall we have for dinner tonight?’ she asked. But no one answered and that silence ached inside. Her cupboards were full. Packed to capacity with cans pilfered from towns up and down the coast, Albany to Bunbury and everywhere in between. Lily reckoned she had enough to last a few years. She picked up a can of lentils and examined the contents again. ‘Can’t be too careful. They stick GM stuff in the strangest of foods. Remember when they introduced that new GM grain to make cows grow fatter and they started exploding in barns? I mean any idiot would know that they are supposed to eat grass and Mother Nature has ways of getting her revenge. I wish we could have one, such gentle creatures, with their big eyes and soft noses. And now they’ve gone the way of the dodo. My grandad had a house cow; she was so soft and warm.’

  * * *

  Peeping through the doorway Lily watched her grandad’s hands rhythmically squeeze the teats. The milk streamed, plish, plish against the side of the metal bucket. His cap was on backwards and his head nestled in the crook between Soretoes’ back leg and her rotund stomach. The cow casually flicked her tail as she chewed. The straw-covered floor soaked up the shit and urine. The rafters were full of cobwebs; dusty, grey ones that hid black spiders. Without looking up, her grandad quickly flicked a teat and squirted milk at Lily. It was a daily routine and one that drew the stable cats close. They lined up at the door, five of them, all different colours and all wild. Lily had tried to catch a kitten once and ended up with it dangling by its teeth from her finger. She didn’t go near them after that. ‘Grab the dish for the cats, will ya Lily? It’s at the back door.’ When she got back, the bucket was full of frothy milk and a few red cow hairs floating on top. Her grandad filled the cat dish. ‘I’ll take this up to your granny. You can milk till I get back.’ He patted the cow and she turned and mooed after him. Lily sat down on the wooden stool. It was black with grime from years of sitting in the cowshed. Small hardened blobs of shit clung to the side. She leaned her head against the cow’s side, so soft and warm. Comforting. Then she began to squeeze like her grandad did, trying hard to get a froth. Plish, Plish. The cow kept chewing; the soft hands of the child didn’t bother her.

  * * *

  Lily shook herself. ‘Get a grip, way too much reminiscing. I’m turning into a mad woman. I need to get away from this place.’ She wondered how long she could go on; she was spending too much time living in the past because she was afraid of the future. It stretched out in front, empty and desolate like the Nullarbor, littered with death along the way. It haunted her dreams, and her days were nightmares steeped in reality.

  The rain danced a jig on the roof, the fire crackled, and unable to stand the silence she turned the television up, trying to block out the sound of emptiness. She tried to cheer herself up by mouthing in a bad American drawl the words to the interview she had seen a thousand times.

  ‘GM 21 will revolutionise the world of farming. Producing two grain crops per season it will effectively bring the price of grain and its by-products down,’ said Lily, as she mixed the ingredients for her lentil burgers. ‘Originally developed as an aid crop for Africa, we soon realised its potential for the socio-disadvantaged in our own country. And, of course, other countries became interested. China is the biggest importer of GM 21, followed by the African continent, and of course it is also exported to Europe and Oceania,’ she said, placing the patties on the pan.

  ‘Why do you not allow other countries to grow the grain?’ asked the reporter.

  ‘GM 21 is an American development and originally we want to keep it on home soil and keep jobs in America. As you are aware, GenetaCorp is a very patriotic company and the components of GM 21 are top secret. However, we are pleased to announce that GM 21 will now be grown in several closely monitored regions outside America.’

  ‘Bastards!,’ Lily shouted at the television. ‘You killed us all.’

  GenetaCorp played God for too long and look where it got us. Rachel Carson was right, we did it to ourselves, blindly following the spoon-feeding government and their web of lies.

  ‘Oh Jase, why did we sit by and let them do this?’

  The government had exalted the benefits of genetically modified foodstuffs with catchy slogans, ‘Eat Your Way Thin,’ ‘Seven Vegies in One,’ and Lily’s favourite, ‘Preserve Yourself from the Inside Out,’—don’t worry about chemicals for your face we’ll put them in your food instead. The voices who had protested were ign
ored and then GM 21 was developed. GenetaCorp scientists inserted contraceptives into grain and then trialled it without approval from The Food and Drug Administration. Africa, so desperate for aid during one of the worst famines the drought-stricken continent had ever experienced, gladly accepted the tonnes of grain. The grain was widely distributed and the black market boomed as it was smuggled across borders, contaminating everything along the way.

  GenetaCorp were hailed as heroes for their relief efforts and won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and all the time they were controlling people’s right to choose to be parents. What no one realised was that Mother Nature doesn’t like to be messed with and the grain mutated and cross pollinated with other strains and other crops. Mother Nature blew across the land and the seas, sending the death pollen everywhere and GenetaCorp no longer had control. Birth rates declined slowly, unnoticeably at first, and then they started to plummet. Africa’s birth rate halved and then other countries experienced similar trends. No one thought of GM 21—they had no reason to suspect anything so insidious. When the DNA mutated again it didn’t just stop people from reproducing, it shut down cells gradually, preserving people from the inside out. Just like the government had claimed with previous genetically modified foodstuffs, but not how they expected.

  ‘The Silent Killer’ the media called it; ‘Mother Nature at her Worst,’ and the whole-time humans had been to blame. Lily couldn’t remember the last time she saw or talked to a living person. Jase and the boys had been silent too long. Sitting quietly, like wax statues from Madame Tussauds. She couldn’t bear to put them in the cold dark ground, not when they looked so alive. Why had they been affected and Lily left to live all alone? Sneaking off to fast food joints with Dad when Mum wasn’t around? She knew Jase had thought she was some weird hippy with her veganism and her refusal to buy genetically modified food. ‘I’m definitely a weirdo now, Jase. Living with three plastic people and talking to them.’ Saying it out loud made her realise how weird she was, and it scared her. The thought that she would end her days alone, without ever seeing or talking to another human was terrifying. She used to crave solitude, now she hated it. Suicide crossed her mind many times. She could just take a pile of pills and drift off into oblivion. It seemed like a nice way to go, but it scared the hell out of her and she found it hard to let go of the life she had. So she was stuck, straddling an abyss of despair and hope, wondering if one day she would succumb to the silent killer.

  She changed the channels again, a stupid habit. What was the point? Only SBS was still running and she knew that soon, whatever powered it would slowly wind down and she would truly be alone. How much longer would the power keep running? She flicked through the stations, like Jase used to do. ‘It’s genetic, love,’ he’d say. ‘I’m sure they’ve done studies somewhere about it. We need to have the remote.’

  ‘So why can’t you tune anything in, if you are so in touch with your inner geek?’

  ‘Because you do it so well,’ he’d say and then he’d give her that big grin of his. She missed that grin and the sound of his voice and his smell.

  She flicked through the channels so fast that she almost missed it. Did she see something or was her mind being cruel? She slowly flicked back, holding her breath. Afraid. A bright picture filled the screen and she realised that somewhere, in this vast land, somebody else was still alive. As she began to weep, the rain stopped dancing its jig on the roof and a rainbow danced across the sky.

  She walked outside and marvelled at the dash of colour in the once-grey sky. Clouds were slowly picking up speed and she could see glimpses of blue sky behind them. She inhaled the cool air and felt it chill her lungs. Fear and sadness gripped her. She knew it was time to finally let go. Jase and the two boys sat inside, oblivious to the future. Lily dragged them one by one to her bedroom and laid them on her bed. Breathing heavily, she sat beside them, stroking their faces in turn. ‘I love you all so very much. And I wish I had gone with you. I don’t know why or for what reason I didn’t, but now it is time for me to go.’ She kissed them gently and walked out of the room.

  Outside the rainbow was getting stronger and the sky bluer. She grabbed a shovel and went inside to the fire. The flames flickered and danced as Lily stuck the shovel into the fire’s heart. The embers glowed in the air and she was afraid she wouldn’t go through with it. She stood looking at her sleeping family and then placed the embers between them. She stood and watched as the fire roared to life, dancing and twisting over the bodies, feeding its desire. It consumed the bed and her family slowly disappeared in red and yellow flashes. The heat drove her out and she sat in the garden and watched as her home disappeared in ash and smoke, into the blue sky.

  Cinta Ku

  Mirandi Riwoe

  T he oil pops in the pan, bites the skin at the base of her thumb and she thinks of Jakub, of the first time she met him in her step-father’s sitting room, surrounded by porcelain vases, egg-shell-white and blue. He stood across from her on the Persian carpet. His eyes took her in, this rich girl who was being tossed to the poorest fishing family of the village, all because her mother had been foolish enough to follow the waves that beckoned to her from the sea. He’d murmured her name, Maya, and, even then, right then, she wanted to rest her face against his chest, inhale the scent of his skin which was as glossy and dark as tamarind.

  But that was a long time ago now. In another land. Later, when she moved to Australia, she taught her language at university—a mere assistant to the lecturer, Professor Malcolm. Her students would never have imagined their neat little Bahasa tutor, Bu Langkun, in her button-up blouse and pleated skirt, had once been a lowly fisherman’s wife, who lived in a hut, who dried and salted sardines until the pungent flesh crumbled in her fingers.

  After scooping garlic into the oil, Maya makes her way into the lounge room and opens the mahogany display cabinet, the one with the leadlight glass. From it she takes out a pink dessert bowl in which are nestled five gleaming shells. Betrothal gifts from Jakub, left by the ebony tree in the garden each morning leading up to their wedding. As she lifts them out, the shells clack against each other. Pressing the cowrie shell to her ear she closes her eyes and for a moment she can hear their beach, their waves, the whistles and coo-coo-coo of the birds. She can smell the brine, the sea-water fug. She runs her fingertips over the metallic peacock swirl on the underside of an oyster shell, while her gaze takes in the milky gleam of the clam. Her favourite is the mother of pearl on the mussel shell. She brings it to her mouth, and the tip of her tongue searches out anything—a granule of sand, a hint of salt— in the shell’s scalloping. But there’s nothing left.

  She smells burning. The garlic. She hurries back to the kitchen and whisks the pot from the stovetop. The slices of garlic, charred so that they look like wood shavings, still bubble in the oil. That’s okay, though, isn’t it? Staring at the garlic for a moment longer, she shakes her head. No. She will start again. It has to be just right.

  While the fresh garlic cooks, Maya glances out the kitchen window, the foggy glass a barrier between the warmth inside and the damp chill out. The eucalypts in the backyard are paler than the teak trees of her childhood. Their leaves are dry, crackle between her fingertips, but she likes the little plants, the ones called ‘pig-face’—what a funny name to call a flower with such friendly petals, but that’s definitely what Pat had called them when she’d popped in from next door to welcome Maya to the street.

  Placing shallots into the mortar with the chillies, ginger and candlenuts, Maya grinds and pushes until the spices are pulpy and her hand cramps. You two will be like a mortar and pestle, Jakub’s grandmother had croaked at their wedding, and then, leaning in close to Maya, You’ll be the mortar. Maya could smell the cardamom on the old woman’s breath from the betel nut she chewed, the red cud wrapped in sirih leaf.

  Each morning, at dawn, Maya waited on the beach for Jakub’s fishing boat to bob into sight. At low tide, sea foam frothed across the sand like honeycomb and
had the orange tinge of paprika. She had to step around bluebottles that washed up on the shoreline so that their whip-thin tails didn’t sting her toes. One day she was inspecting a tangle of the tiny jellyfish, strung together like a bunch of fairy lights. Jakub came up behind her, stomped the bulbous bluebottles under the soles of his sandals so they burst.

  ‘Jakub,’ she screeched, jumping out of the way.

  He grinned at her and shrugged. ‘I can’t help myself.’

  Smiling, Maya mixes turmeric into the paste and scrapes it all into the pan. From the fridge she brings out a bowl of cubed lamb, and the meat sizzles as soon as it hits the spices. Seasoning the meat, she watches as crystals of salt sink into the pink flesh, and thinks of how she used to lick the salt from Jakub’s skin, from the flat planes of his shoulder blades. Of how, on the very hottest days, when the heat thrummed through her blood and left even the furniture warm to the touch, he’d purchase a handful of ice to place on the back of her neck, and then slowly suck it away. She shivers, stares at a speck of sauce on the white kitchen tiles, and can almost feel the trickle of water down the middle of her back.

  But her skin is no longer smooth like it was then. It’s as dry as a desert—elbows, throat, her hands—an arid mosaic of drifts and creases. Arthritis tightens her joints and aches in the bones of her right foot.

  Thumping four stalks of lemongrass with the base of her knife, she adds them to the pan. The lemongrass lies atop the lamb, bruised and knotted like Jakub’s body that bright morning they’d brought him to her on a makeshift stretcher made out of a shattered door, a sarong stretched across its beams. The waves had smashed his body against the rocks for so long his eyes were as milky as tapioca balls, and bloodberries were scattered across his chest, except they weren’t berries. She couldn’t keep her thoughts straight as Jakub’s father told her of the storm that had claimed five fishermen; as Jakub’s mother pressed her cheek to Maya’s swollen belly and wept.