“Oh, your baby,” Carmen’s voice changed. She sounded like she was crooning as she spoke to Alinta. “What did you have? What did you name it?”
“Baby is girl, and Mel named her Ainia after Greek Amazon and like my name,” Alinta told her proudly.
Carmen and Fabiola looked at a blushing Mel in surprise, and then, Carmen smiled. “That’s lovely,” she told the delighted mother. “I’d like to see her when we stop later. Nothing felt better than holding my babies,” she reminisced. “Your English has gotten much better!” she complimented the surprised mother, who smiled shyly.
Mel smiled, enjoying the interaction and feeling relieved to see them. “Have the shearers left?” she worried as she addressed Fabiola.
“No,” the Australian shook her head. “We told them we were waiting on some of our farther out flocks and convinced them to stay on. They had a couple of our flocks to do yet, so we should get this flock to them in time. That one was worried about you though,” she said, nodding towards a now blushing Carmen.
“You said you’d come in time for the shearers,” she accused to hide her embarrassment over her concern for her friend.
“I tried, but this is a lot, and I’ll admit…we need help.”
“There are a couple men at the station who answered an ad you had someone place for you?” Carmen asked inquiringly.
Mel nodded, relieved. She had more ads she wanted to write, and she would do so in the evenings as they finished the drive. She hoped there was mail for her in addition to the men that had answered the ad.
They discussed the sheep. Mel was happy to see her friend and cousin, and she was hoping to make Fabiola a friend too. She felt the potential was there but understood that the woman hadn’t known how to take her before. Now, with nearly a year behind her, Fabiola must understand that there was only friendship between her and her cousin, nothing more.
“Who are the carters?” Mel asked innocently, but both Carmen and Alinta knew the question wasn’t as innocent as it seemed.
“Oh, they’re the ones I use every year. This will probably be the last year I use them though. Carmen has found some discrepancies in the books and on the invoices over the years.”
“Would the name Bradley be among any of the men working for them?” She glanced in time to see Alinta flinch slightly and then looked at Carmen, who was shaking her head to the negative.
“No, I don’t recall any of the men being addressed as Bradley. Why? Is there a problem?”
“Well, one of the carters we met on our way out here was named Bradley, and I’ll shoot the bugger on sight if he ever comes anywhere near us again,” Mel said in a no-nonsense tone and then dropped the subject.
Fabiola looked startled, exchanging a look with Carmen and then looking back at the big grazer and glancing at the gun she wore on her hip as well as the double-barreled musket in her scabbard, both readily at hand. While looking back at Carmen, Mel happened to see the pleased expression on Alinta’s face before she looked down at her baby.
“Well, these sheep aren’t going to get to your home paddock any faster without our help,” Mel stated, walking her horse off in another direction and halting their friendly conversation.
Carmen and Fabiola exchanged another look before they too went to help with the flock. Alinta glanced at the three women and tightened her hold on the reins of the many packhorses she was now holding. She managed to cuddle Ainia closer as she urged her horse on. Mel had been a good teacher, and Alinta was no longer frightened of the strange beast since realizing she was in control of it.
* * * * *
As they turned in to camp, Alinta began to get down from her horse on her own, but Mel was immediately there to help her, smiling shyly at the woman as she caught her. She left to finish setting up her portion of their camp as Alinta turned to take the bags down from her horse and give the pups carried within to the anxious bitches. She put the bags of pups down and out of the way. Returning to where Alinta was setting up their fire and making dinner, Mel stopped to pet the puppies briefly, watching as the bitches cuddled their broods. Both bitches wiggled their butts in greeting, simulating wagging tails that were no longer there.
That night was the first good night’s sleep Mel had had in a long time. Knowing that there were others to help watch her sheep, she slept deeply, rising in the early morning to take her own shift. She went into the brush to take care of her business, and upon her return, she heard Ainia fussing and Alinta trying to calm her.
“May I take the baby for you?” she offered and held out her large hands.
Alinta didn’t hesitate. She had fed the baby, but she still wouldn’t settle down. She watched as Mel talked softly to the infant as she walked off into the early morning light to make her rounds, knowing that just the presence of humans kept some predators away. Alinta rose to go in the brush and do her morning absolutions. She was using water more often now since she learned that Mel liked her clean. She had observed as Mel had washed the baby several times. While Alinta would have rubbed sheep fat on the baby, Mel washed it off. She did allow Alinta to rub the baby with crushed leaves that warded off the constant flies and mosquitos, but then, she also used them once she realized how effective they were. Alinta stoked the fire as the vaqueros sleepily woke and rose.
“Good morning,” Carmen whispered as she came up to the warmth of the fire to help.
“Good morning,” Alinta replied, understanding the greeting after her months with Mel.
“Where is Ainia?” Carmen asked. She had hoped to cuddle some more with the infant like she had before they went to sleep the previous night. Fabiola too had held the baby, if somewhat awkwardly. She’d compared it to a newborn lamb, causing much hilarity for the other women.
“Mel took her to calm baby,” she said inaccurately, almost shyly, as she wasn’t used to communicating with anyone but Mel.
Carmen smiled, knowing Mel had been good with her children on the long trek out here. She wondered if the American had wanted children of her own and if that would ever have been a possibility. Well, if what she suspected between the American and the Australian Aborigine was true, that baby was as much Mel’s as it was Alinta’s. She busied herself with helping the woman prepare breakfast, so they could all get on their way. It was still a long way across Twin Station.
As they approached the home paddock, other riders rode out to help with the large flock, splitting it into different corrals, so the shearers could start in on the sheep.
Mel and Alinta took one of the empty stockmen’s houses, surprised to see a modern house being built on one of the hills beyond the home paddock. “What’s that?” Mel asked Carmen as they watched the shearers effortlessly guiding their clippers along a sheep. A good shearer was worth their weight in gold as they quickly and efficiently sheared the sheep. Very little blood was spilled, and the maximum amount of wool was taken from the poor beast, who accepted their lot without any fanfare as they waited patiently to be released. Only occasionally did a sheep fight back, these feisty ones making it interesting for those helping to keep the sheep processed—from pushing them into the chute, to pushing them back into the corrals. Many of the mamas had to seek out their lambs, who had been baahing pitifully while waiting impatiently on their dams after they were separated from them. It still amazed the women and some of the men how quickly a sheep could find its lamb among all that were crying out for their mamas.
“Oh, Carmen didn’t like our accommodations,” Fabiola said as she came up, hearing Mel asking about the building going on at the hillside. She then went to talk to Mel about the men who had come out to work for her.
One of the men had already been ordered off the station for making trouble down in the Aborigine village by pestering the women. Another had angered Mel when he kept eyeing Alinta, especially when she was breastfeeding Ainia. Not wanting to make a scene or restrict Alinta in any way, Mel had instead glared at the man, her size intimidating him until he stopped his behavior. She wouldn’t
be hiring him.
Mel was approached by a cleric wanting to baptize the baby, and when he found the large man was not married to the primitive aboriginal woman, he was aghast. He blathered on so long that Mel found herself agreeing to have Ainia baptized.
“How in the world did that happen?” she asked Carmen and Fabiola as they walked along. Fabiola was yelling at the men that were loitering to get back to work.
“He wears you down. He’s almost as bad as the priests back in California at the missions. They are forever saving the savages, as they call them.”
“Well, I better go explain to Alinta, so he doesn’t frighten her. I’ve also got about a dozen letters to write,” she sighed, remembering the pile of letters she had gone through.
“We should be done with your flock tomorrow,” Fabiola reminded her, glancing at the men, the sheep they were shearing, and the many carts the men were filling.
“Oh, that means she will be going soon,” Carmen said, obviously enjoying their visit and reluctant to see them leave.
“Well, I have a station to establish too,” Mel reminded her friend fondly. She’d been thinking of nothing else since they got here, and she watched Fabiola’s setup. Already, Carmen’s influence was obvious in the operations of this station and not just in the building of the house on the side of the hill.
Mel forgot to warn Alinta. Instead, she went up the hill to discuss with the builder about the work he was doing for Carmen and the possibility of working for her when he was done.
She returned to the stockmen’s house to find Alinta upset.
* * * * *
“Good afternoon, my child. May I speak with you?” said the man of God after he had knocked presumptuously on the door of the house.
Alinta, not used to that noise, had jumped where she was making the bed as Mel had shown her, and she hurried to see who was making the noise. It was an odd man dressed all in black with a white patch under his chin, and he looked at her benignly. She neither nodded or made the gesture with her hand that signified ‘no,’ but the man opened the screen door and came in once he saw her.
“I understand you have a child?” he asked, seeing the baby lying on blankets on the floor and making sucking noises.
Alinta didn’t know if she should be afraid of this man or not. He was not dressed like any other man she had seen among the white men. She just stared at him, waiting.
“We must get her baptized, so she is welcome into the kingdom of our Lord, Jesus Christ,” he told her, smiling to show he meant no harm but not sure the simple woman understood him. “Do you know our Lord, Jesus Christ?”
Alinta made a negative motion with her hand, but the white man didn’t see it. He saw her simply staring at him, uncomprehending, he thought.
“Our Lord, Jesus Christ can save you and your child!” he told her with the passion of his position. These simple people must be saved! He felt it was his duty to save them all. “We will take the child and pour holy water over its head and baptize it.” He smiled again; sure he was being benevolent to the poor child.
Alinta understood many of the words but didn’t like their content. She wondered if this Lord Jesus Christ was going to drown her daughter. She bent to pick up the baby and hold her close. Ainia immediately burrowed in, hoping to be fed again, her appetite hearty.
“I’ve told Mr. Lawrence about it and he has agreed. I’ll be happy to perform the ceremony for you. I am a man of God,” he told her, pointing to himself, “a religious man. It has also come to my attention that you and Mr. Lawrence are not married. This is a sacrilege! We need to remedy this as well. We could have a double ceremony?” He smiled, unsure if the woman understood him. These were such a simple people.
He had no idea that Alinta did understand what he was saying or that she was of a different tribe than the Aborigines around Twin Station or any others he had met. If Mel agreed to this, Alinta would have to obey. She watched as the man in black left them. She went to the door well after he had left to watch him walking across the yard. She was deeply upset, but Ainia’s rootings had produced the desired effect, and her breasts were letting down milk that she must feed to the baby before her cries began.
When Mel returned, she spent a good half hour explaining to Alinta that the ceremony was for religious purposes, not to drown Ainia. “I would never hurt your daughter,” she told the woman repeatedly as she attempted to calm her. “This ceremony is so she can enter the kingdom of God,” Mel parroted something she had been taught long ago.
“Kingdom?” Alinta asked, confused.
“Remember when we named Ainia?”
The woman nodded, hoping to understand all the words that Mel was telling her. That religious man had used so many words she didn’t know.
“I told you of the Greek gods and how Ainia is an Amazon name?”
Alinta nodded, smiling, and said, “An enemy of Achilles?
“Yes,” she answered, pleased with Alinta’s memory. “This is about God, the Christian God, and while the baptism won’t hurt Ainia, it might help her someday.” She was thinking about Ainia growing up, and she realized it would be easier to get along in this English society if she was baptized, even if they were in the Outback and far away from most of the masses. One never knew what the future might hold and how things might change.
“Man say we should marry too,” Alinta mentioned. “What be marry?”
Mel suddenly felt very uncomfortable, wondering how to explain the concept of marriage. “It’s a ceremony where we would pledge ourselves to each other,” she said, watching the woman to see if she understood. “It means you would be my mate for all time, and I would be your mate.” Mel wondered if she was being too modest and too simplistic. The ceremony of marriage meant a great deal more to some people.
“Mean Mel no go away ever? Alinta stay always?”
“Do you want to go away? Find your family?” she asked, looking worriedly at her. She had thought her worry that the woman would go with the Aborigines she had seen was long past since she showed no interest in the ones that lived here on the station or the few they had seen in their own wanderings.
Alinta made a signal with her hand. Mel saw it now and knew it meant no. It had taken her a while to learn these signs from the woman, but she watched her body language a lot more now than she had when she had first met the woman. “Family no want Alinta now. Mel, Ainia family now.”
“Do you want to marry me?” Mel asked. “Do you want to make it permanent and right in the eyes of the white man?” Her heart was beating frantically right now. She had never considered that she might marry a woman, not even this woman. Men, yes. Long ago she had thought about it, even dreamed about it, but she had realized her fate when she was attracted to women and men didn’t want her. She looked in the nearly black eyes of the striking aboriginal woman, hoping she would say yes, yet also afraid she would say yes.
“You want marry Alinta? Become my mate for all time?” Alinta too was nervous. She had no plans to ever leave Mel, but if Mel wanted this ceremony to make it right in the eyes of the white man, as she said, then Alinta wanted it too.
“Only if you do,” Mel said, but she suddenly felt shy and unsure. “You understand, if they knew what I am…” she began uncertainly. She knew they would never marry her to this woman if they knew that she was female.
“That you are grazer?” Alinta asked, stressing the z sound in a funny way that Mel found endearing.
Mel smiled as she shook her head and addressed the issue she knew Alinta had figured out long ago. Quietly, almost as though someone else was listening, she said, “No. In the white man’s world, they do not let women marry other women.”
“Why not?” Alinta asked.
Mel shrugged, not willing to debate it with her now. It felt like her heartbeat was going to choke her. It was pounding so hard in her chest it felt like it was working its way into her throat. “That is their way. They do not see the obvious. They do not see that I am a woman and not a man, and
they see you as a woman.” She looked at the physically fit woman, who was solid and beautiful to Mel. “They think marriage is only between a man and a woman. Do you want a man? A real man?”
Alinta was already shaking her head, knowing Mel didn’t always see her hand when she made the sign. “I want Mel,” she said simply.
Mel was shaking. “Do you want…?” she was afraid to ask the question. They hadn’t gone there but that one time. She was amazed when Alinta made her own wishes known.
“Mel, will you do that lip on lip again?”
Mel turned her head slightly, almost as if she hadn’t heard correctly. “You liked that lip on lip?” she parodied and then corrected herself. “It’s called kissing.”
“Kissing?”
“Yes, when you touch lips it is called kissing. The lip on lip is called a kiss,” she explained, feeling foolish.
“Yes, I liked kissing,” she admitted, remembering the feeling of closeness and the tingles it had engendered.
“Do you want me to kiss you?” Mel asked, her voice growing huskier as she looked intently at Alinta.
The woman nodded, suddenly feeling shy and not knowing why.
Mel took a hesitant step forward and leaned down to the woman. She desired her so but had been afraid to take it any further. She did not wish to take advantage of the young woman. It hadn’t occurred to her that Alinta might want her in return. Gently, she kissed the woman, her lips feeling wonderful beneath Mel’s. At first, Alinta just accepted the kiss, but as Mel continued it and softly opened her lips, the woman imitated her, and Mel deepened the kiss, enjoying it when Alinta’s hands crept around her body to feel the muscles she had so admired on the fit woman.
Alinta was amazed that a meeting of the mouths could feel so good. Her mother hadn’t told her about this when she told her she must accept a man’s touch. She had never said anything about accepting a woman’s touch. To Alinta, Mel was much more than a woman. She was everything to the aboriginal woman. She was Mel. For her, that was everything, and she eagerly accepted her kisses, realizing as it went on that she wanted more. She was imitating the taller woman and learning. She also realized she wanted Mel’s touch and hesitantly put own arms around the large woman, feeling the broad shoulders as she clasped her to her body that was becoming warm.
Outback Born Page 10
