Meet Me at the Intersection

by Ambelin Kwaymullina

  ‘It’s strange to think we would have been enemies in the war — your father might have fought against my father.’

  ‘My father didn’t fight against anyone. He was a farmer.’

  ‘Mine drove trucks.’

  ‘Was he in a battle?’

  ‘A little bit. But not against Italians.’ I don’t actually know if that’s true. He’s never told us anything about it. And anyway, it has nothing to do with me, with you.

  You offer me your arm. I slip one hand into the crook of your elbow. We walk on, our footsteps sounding hollow on the timber. We nod to the man with the dog.

  ‘Lovely night,’ he says. ‘Don’t get into any mischief, ladies.’

  ‘We won’t,’ you say.

  ‘Pity,’ he says. ‘I have wine at home. You’re welcome to come share it with me.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ you say. You lead me away. He keeps talking to our shadows.

  ‘There’s always one,’ you say. ‘Why is that?’

  ‘He must be lonely.’

  ‘Everyone’s lonely,’ you say. ‘You don’t hear us talking to strange girls in the middle of St Kilda Pier.’

  ‘But that’s exactly what we are doing.’

  You stop, swing around to look at me. Even in the starlight, your eyes glitter green. ‘We are not strangers. Not anymore.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  We walk a little farther. ‘His dog,’ I say, ‘looks just like that little Russian dog they sent into space. Just think. The poor wee thing is in orbit, all by itself, this very moment.’

  ‘But imagine the view from up there.’ You point at the moon, thin and pale as a fingernail. ‘When are you getting married?’ you ask.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You said …’

  ‘I just meant, generally.’

  ‘But you will?’

  ‘Doesn’t everyone?’ I say.

  ‘I suppose so. Do you have a boyfriend?’

  ‘No. Nothing like that.’

  ‘Sweet sixteen and never been kissed?’

  ‘I have so!’

  ‘Really? By who?’

  ‘Gregory Wallace.’

  ‘Lucky boy.’

  ‘In the back row of the Eclipse Theatre. If I remember rightly, it was a matinee of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.’

  You grin. You’re staring at me. Too close. I bend down, pick up a broken mussel shell, and flick it into the water.

  ‘Why are you asking all this?’

  ‘Just curious,’ you say. ‘And that is it? Just the fortunate Gregory?’

  ‘Do you think I just go around kissing people?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  We reach the end of the pier. It’s a long way back to the shore. Below us, the high tide swirls around the pylons.

  ‘If it was a bit warmer, we could go swimming,’ I say. Bare legs in the dark water. Our bodies floating.

  ‘Next time,’ you say. ‘Swimming and ice cream. I promise.’

  ‘What about you?’ I say. I try not to look at your throat, at your mouth. ‘Have you kissed anybody?’

  You throw your head back and laugh like a wharfie. ‘Plenty of people. But that’s not the question.’

  ‘What is, then?’

  You take one step closer. ‘Who will I kiss next?’

  I shuffle backwards. ‘How can anyone ever know the answer to that?’

  ‘I think I do.’

  I turn away. There’s a ship steaming out of the bay, horn blaring, lit up like Christmas — sailing to Perth, maybe, or London. ‘Well, I suppose married people know.’

  ‘Not always.’

  I swing back around. ‘What? Are you married, TJ?’

  You take off your jacket and spread it on the pier. ‘Come,’ you say. ‘Sit with me.’

  ‘I should be getting back.’

  ‘Yes, I am married,’ you say.

  ‘Who to?’ I feel a bit sick inside at the thought of it.

  ‘A mechanic. His name is Pietro. Peter.’

  ‘Why aren’t you at home, then?’

  ‘Can’t married people go out?’

  ‘I suppose so. But it isn’t—’

  ‘Normal?’

  ‘Yes. No.’

  ‘I am not very good at being normal,’ you say.

  ‘I noticed.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘There aren’t many women who dress like you. Or ride motorcycles.’

  ‘Please,’ you say. ‘Come sit.’

  I lower myself onto the jacket, my feet folded under me. The night is colder now, darker somehow, and windy. We sit for a few moments, not looking at each other, just at the bay and the sky, the dark shapes of palm trees and yacht masts, and the city lights in the distance. Somewhere a dog yaps.

  ‘I was married at sixteen,’ you say, drawing the words out like a song. ‘I was pretty then, with long hair like yours. I had a job in a shirt factory and Pietro worked in a garage around the corner. Every day when I walked to the tram stop, he whistled at me. He tried to talk to me, but I ignored him. Then he found out where I lived. He visited every Saturday and eventually everyone got used to him. He asked Papa for my hand, and Papa said yes. Nobody asked me.’

  I want to say, That’s terrible. I want to stroke your hair, your hand. I don’t. I just sit there.

  ‘He’s a good man,’ you say. ‘Strong. Hard-working. But we make each other unhappy.’

  ‘What’s he doing tonight?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s in Bundaberg for the cane harvest. He lives there now, with a woman.’

  ‘How awful!’

  ‘Much better this way, believe me.’

  ‘You don’t mind?’ I want to ask so many questions. But you’re staring down at your hands, turning the Triumph key over and over in your fingers. No wedding ring.

  ‘Nancy,’ you say, and my name thrums like a song on your tongue. You look up at me and smile. ‘Did you ever kiss a girl?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  You aren’t smiling now.

  ‘Dot has though,’ I confess. ‘She tried to kiss me once.’

  ‘But you didn’t let her?’

  ‘No.’ I’m blushing now in the dark. ‘She’s kissed lots of other girls, though. She told me.’

  ‘And you are still her friend?’

  ‘I’ve known her a long time. Since grade two. But one night she got a bit tipsy, and, well, she’d never told anyone else. She has other friends now — people like her. Don’t tell her I said anything. It’s supposed to be a secret.’

  ‘It is safe with me.’

  ‘I know.’

  Silence. I can hear my own breath, ragged in the wind.

  ‘Have you?’ I whisper. ‘Have you kissed a girl?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh gosh — have you kissed Dot?’

  You let out a laugh. ‘Don’t worry. She’s not my type. And I’m not hers.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  A lopsided grin, just like Jimmy Dean. ‘I feel it in my bones.’

  ‘I don’t have a type,’ I say. ‘Although I do quite like Elvis Presley.’

  ‘Thought you might.’ You flick your hair back off your forehead, Elvis-style.

  ‘Love me tender,’ you croon, sweet and soft. ‘Love me true.’

  It’s my turn to laugh. ‘I knew you’d be a singer.’

  Now we’re smiling, silly grins as wide as the moon, two girls drunk on nothing — on everything.

  ‘Hello again, ladies.’ It’s the man with the dog. He’s about as old as Dad. Hair slicked in grey strings over a bald patch. ‘What are you doing out all alone in the dark?’

  ‘But we aren’t alone,’ you say.

  He doesn’t take any notice. ‘Mind if I join you?’

  You scramble to your feet. ‘Yes, actually, we do mind.’

  ‘Don’t be like that,’ he says. ‘I brought a bottle with me.’

  You reach out your hand to me. ‘We’re just leaving.’ You pull me up, grab your jacket and slip it on.r />
  ‘Have a pleasant evening,’ you say.

  We try to walk away but he grabs my arm.

  ‘Come on, love.’

  ‘Let go of her.’ You shove him away but his fingers dig deeper.

  ‘You’re hurting me.’

  ‘Give us a kiss.’

  You start yelling. ‘Get your filthy hands off her.’

  ‘Listen to me, darl,’ he hisses the stink of cigarettes and stale beer into my face. ‘You’re too pretty to hang around with that freak.’

  You stomp hard on his toes with your boot, and he yelps. The dog races in circles, yapping.

  ‘Run!’

  I fling him off me, and we race back to the road. His curses follow us. You leap onto the Triumph, cool as Jimmy Dean, and I wrap my arms around you. Then we’re gone, free, roaring through the darkness, and we don’t look back.

  We never look back.

  JORDI KERR

  Jordi Kerr is an emerging writer who identifies as queer and non-binary, and who lives with chronic illness — an autoimmune disease affecting their muscles that requires regular hospitalisation for treatment. Although they grew up in a small country town where no-one was openly queer, they now work in regional Victoria supporting LGBTIQA+ young people. This story is a work of fiction, informed by Jordi’s own experiences. Jordi writes, ‘There are many myths, and misunderstandings (and tropes) about experiences of being part of the LGBTIQA+ community. I wanted to touch on complex aspects like hiding your difference, and inherited trauma.

  I also really wanted to write about bodies. I’ve always had a complicated relationship with my own body — firstly as a fat person, then as a queer person, and then as a person with a chronic physical illness. But I think feeling disconnected from your body in some way, or feeling like you have no control over it, is an almost universal experience. There’s a lot in dominant culture that says we should hate or be ashamed of our bodies, but our bodies are our homes. I advocate for bodies as sites of pride, kindness and love.’

  Sheer Fortune

  Everything is weightless. I float, I fall, I fly. It is quiet here — no sound except the soft pulse of my own flesh, the gentle but urgent thrum of my heartbeats.

  I missed the ocean badly. Missed swimming in water that wasn’t brown and cloudy, where I could open my eyes underwater without them stinging with grit.

  Mum moved us here after what happened to my Aunt Haven. She was in the news for weeks. Utterly unrecognisable, of course. No-one except Mum and me had any idea that the pieces of body they paraded in front of the cameras belonged to Haven Krooksen. Not the fishermen who found her, the police or the scientists. Definitely not the media or rubberneckers, who I reckoned must have descended from blowflies.

  Mum decided that the ocean wasn’t safe. She was all up-anchors and set-sail for any town that had absolutely no anchors, no sails, and definitely no water that connected to the sea. So now me, Mum, and our collective grief are all in country hell. Also known as Warragowra.

  I missed Aunt Haven too. A world without her seemed as impossible as a life without the ocean, and I don’t actually know where the ache of one loss ends and the other begins. I do know that what happened to her wasn’t the fault of the ocean. Not that I can even begin to have that argument with Mum. How d’you ask someone to look at both sides, when hers is weighted down with the body of her sister?

  I stretch out … the edges of the dam are beyond my reach but they still feel too close. The sensation pulls at my nerves and the water shifts from being my support to being a weight, pressing against me from all sides. Tight, claustrophobic. I try to slow my movements, try to propel myself gently away from the panic.

  Something wet flicked onto the back of my neck and giggles ebbed around the back of the room. I refused to turn around. Mr Stevens faltered a little in his explanation of Moby Dick, aware something was amiss, but unable to pinpoint exactly what. If I turned around, it would have cemented his suspicions and he would have pulled the class to a halt. Which would have given me an automatic downgrade from stoic to snitch.

  ‘Brenna,’ Mr Stevens said, calling on me.

  Oh no.

  ‘What …’

  Don’t ask what’s going on.

  ‘… is …’

  Crap.

  ‘… the importance of relationships within Moby Dick?’

  Oh.

  ‘Uh … well, the dominant relationship in the text is unrequited.’

  There was a whisper, ‘She’d know a lot about that.’

  ‘Go on,’ Mr Stevens continued, flicking his hands to indicate he required a response longer than one sentence.

  ‘Well, the book is all about Ahab and the whale, and the whale gets no say in any of this. The whole narrative is driven by Ahab’s desires which’re represented with some pretty damn phallic imagery. Really, the story can be read as symbolic of our patriarchal society — a white dude perpetuates a bloody dick-slinging match—’

  ‘Language, Brenna.’

  ‘Sorry, harpoon-slinging match, because he got told no.’

  ‘That’s not—’ Mr Stevens began.

  ‘She’s right, Mr Stevens.’

  I looked around. Marama had her hand raised and spoke with certainty, even though Mr Stevens hadn’t called on her.

  ‘The thrust of the novel is a cishet, white male’s determination to literally plant his harpoon in a violent and retributive manner in a creature that he labels as wild and dangerous, simply because it didn’t acquiesce to his whims. It holds a mirror up to a culture that values the desire of one person with privilege over the wellbeing of all others. It’s colonial narrative meets revenge porn.’

  More snickers from the heathens at the back of the room. Trent tried to start a slow clap. Mr Stevens silenced him.

  ‘Cishet? What’s that?’ Billy asked.

  ‘Ah. Yes. Marama, would you like to explain it to the class?’ Mr Stevens dodged the question.

  Marama turned in her chair to face Billy. ‘Someone who is both cisgender and heterosexual. And if you don’t know what those mean, I suggest you google them. It could be a highly educational experience for you.’

  Marama made eye contact with me and grinned. It was the first time anyone here had done anything other than sling barbs at me.

  ‘Thank you,’ I mouthed silently.

  ‘Welcome,’ she mouthed back.

  I sweep across the bottom of the dam, stirring up mud. It gives the water a burnt taste and there’s a susurration from the disturbed yabbies. Everything about me is yellow brown grey and I don’t know when this started or when it will end. Time is an eternity, a second. I keen for the pulse of waves and the endless blue and the chatter, chatter, chatter of other creatures. Here there is no moment of seeing and being seen. No joyous intertwining with family. I am alone.

  When I was twelve, my mum and Aunt Haven took me to the beach and gave me The Talk. I’m pretty sure it was a different version to what everyone else my age heard about changing bodies. In Health class at school, it was all about hair and involuntary secretions of blood and semen. My body, Mum warned, was going to start growing scales.

  ‘I’m afraid you’re a were-kraken,’ she said.

  It sounded so absurd I figured Mum was attempting her first ever practical joke and, predictably, failing hard. She was in full therapist mode, though — open body language, steady eye contact, kind tone, and a slight tilt to her head.

  It didn’t add up.

  I looked at my aunt, who was nodding conciliatorily.

  ‘I am too,’ she said. ‘And so was your grandmother. And her mother before her …’

  ‘It affects all those born female in our family,’ Mum added quietly.

  Haven wrapped an arm around Mum’s shoulders and stroked her back as she continued. ‘Mum — your grandmother, I mean, called it the family curse. The way she told it, Andreas, a fisherman ancestor of ours, killed a kraken because it was stealing his fish, and fed his family with it. They all died instantly —
poisoned — except for his daughter, who’d refused to eat it. But the kraken got its vengeance on the whole family anyway because Erica, the daughter who didn’t partake, was instead cursed to turn into a kraken during every full moon.’

  ‘Which is all bullshit,’ Mum said. ‘But it was what our mum had been told, and it was how she reconciled the apparent impossibility of her own reality.’

  ‘She also told the story much better than me. That was the CliffsNotes version. Your grandmother really got into it.’

  ‘She was quite the storyteller,’ Mum agreed. ‘However flawed the story. How on earth did a fisherman manage to kill a kraken with just a spear?’

  ‘Because he threw it with all of his anger!’ Haven imitated my grandmother’s voice.

  ‘Oh, of course. All of his anger!’

  ‘And by fortune—’

  ‘Sheer fortune.’

  ‘—pierced its brain.’

  ‘May we never forget the mighty strength and sheer bad luck of poor fisherman Andreas,’ Mum said soberly.

  She offered me her hand, and I took it. I felt like I’d just lost something, but I had no idea what. I was still me. I was still right here, with Mum and Haven. Dune beneath us, waves in front.

  So why was I crying?

  ‘Mum?’ My voice cracked and she wrapped me in a hug.

  ‘It’s okay. It’s okay,’ she repeated. ‘We’re here for you. We’ll always love you.’

  ‘I don’t understand …’ I sniffled. But even as I said it I knew that wasn’t quite true. At the core of me, a song was stirring. Everything Haven and my mum had said sounded familiar, albeit in a distant way, like when my guitar aligns with my tuner. I felt the truth, and it was terrifying.

  ‘What’s gunna happen?’ I asked instead.

  Mum kissed me on the forehead. Cupped my face in her hands and looked me in the eye as she spoke. ‘Haven will be with you every step of the way, okay?’

  I looked at Haven, who nodded and smiled. ‘It’s hard,’ she said, taking my other hand, ‘Which sucks. But it’s also beautiful.’

  I propel forward, restless, hunting. There is nothing and no-one. I reach the dam wall. Flick back. The other end. Everywhere I turn wall, wall, wall. I thrash my tentacles. The surface of the water waves and froths, but they touch nothing familiar. There is no steadying curl from my kin.