‘Yeah,’ I say.
She strains the murky white water from the pasta in the sink, talking out the back window to me.
‘Yep, I’ll fix it up for ya girl. Go on then, clean up, lunch is almost ready.’
‘What is it?’ I say, trying to round the edges.
‘A feed, May, it’s a feed. Go wash up.’
Wantok
Johnny takes me away, together we run the white-sanded beaches, and we eat mangoes and pick coconuts and wade through swamps to pull up lily roots and eat them as sugar rhubarb. Even if we’re sitting there in Caroline Street or walking up Vine to the park, we’ve escaped with each other and the rest of it – the Block and the city rise up and drift away like vacant echoes.
We follow the train tracks to Central, we rake in the city and buy hot chip rolls with gravy, we go west and discover streets that even Johnny didn’t know existed; there we play hockey games with wooden stakes and beer cans. Johnny says it’s not the same as in Waiben but it’s still fun. In Waiben he says they use tree branches and they carve their own balls from wood. He says Waiben is his real home, where his father lives. We talk of the beaches and our old folk, them and something missing.
Johnny Smith was born four months before me; we worked it out, exactly to the day. He was born in Sydney though, not Waiben. He hasn’t been to Waiben yet, but he knows that it is his home. Johnny said he was going to get initiated, but Justine was in lock up so she couldn’t come to mourn the spirits. He reckons he’s still going to go up and get cut. He says people call it Thursday Island, cos Thursday is pension day see, the best day of the week, and that’s why they call it that, cos it’s so good up there that everyday is just like pension day.
When I first came to Joyce’s he’d tried to crack onto me. I remember us sitting in his room at Joyce’s, him blowing bong smoke through the gap of the window. The way he looked at me, it was nice, a gentle look, but I told him to piss off, told him all men are bastards.
‘You’re my girlfriend, hey? Me and you?’
‘Piss off. All men are bastards. Don’t reckon you’re any exception!’
‘Nah, girl, you’ve just heard that from TV and stuff, magazines’ve brainwashed ya. That ain’t true. Look at me – I’m no bastard!’
‘I know all men are bastards. Even if you’re not, even if you’re just too young to be a bastard – don’t worry you will be one day.’
We stir each other up, joking. We know we are just best friends.
He always tells me about when his uncles have travelled through the Block, come and stayed with Joyce even. She’d make them a big pasta feed and they’d tell him all about the Torres Strait. He told me the same stories.
He says in the islands lots of people live in houses on high stilts, perched up in the leaves of pawpaw trees and towering black palms. He says that you can reach out from your window and pick off a ripe mango. Just like that.
He takes my hand like always and we scramble up the palms and hack down coconuts with a machete, we run down to the rocky beaches and cast off our canoe, we fish all day, following the reefs and tides and winds. We read the ocean looking for dugong, we beachcomb for turtle. We visit the other islands and trade food and sing songs. We dance with palm branches and deri flowers, like we are spirit people. We rest in the houses as warm tropical storms light up the bruised sky. We lie out on the high balconies and watch the ocean turn to ink. Osprey hawks soar in from the deep, they plummet feet first into the stirring water, when they hit it they fold their wings downward and lift up into the air, a fish slipping in their claws. They return home, like us, to nests. Their nests are like houses, stacked high above the water line atop rock outcrops in the hot billowing wind. We rest.
In the late evening when we wake, I take his hand and lead him to my mum’s country, to the lake. We wade through the delicate water, the moon spilling on our colourless bodies. Brolgas ruffling their wings against water ribbons, making the muddy bath flinch in coiling waves. We dig hollows in the wet sand and become snakes, silting though the swampy streams, creating mouths and rivers. We make fires, hunt red kangaroo and wrap ourselves in the warm skin and sand. We sleep.
We run back to Joyce’s house, and hang out on the little veranda. Johnny’s cousins come round and we listen to music under the sunshine. Daylight blanching our dreamings, the gritty air fuming back to our noses, engines starting back in our listening, and we remember what we’re all really seeing. Beach lines of gutters, trunks of layered windows, metal wings fleeing the sky, and dinner on the stove. We don’t mind, because anytime we can leave in our minds.
It isn’t bad when we come back; we notice little similarities to our dreaming places. The cabbage palms, the fire pit, the family.
I suppose that’s what makes it, family, and I suppose we don’t see the faces in our dreams yet. We promise each other to find them, the faces, to go to our homelands for our people, for ourselves. We are best friends. Johnny says I am his wantok, his black girl ally. I tell him that he reminds me of my brother. And he says he is my brother, always.
Painted Dreaming
Staleness oozed from the pores of plasterboard, yellow, blue and fluorescent green spilling along the symbols, words, along identity. I went and hung out with some of the streeties. The old Waterloo terrace had been our canvas, our outlet. Etching ownership out of aerosol. The falling of colour cured us. It wasn’t the existing but the enduring that I needed. All of us did.
One-step forward, two-steps back, no home again. Fifth time that fortnight that the pigs came to clear us out. Living, making camp, was no right of ours. From one chipboard door to another, inviting themselves in as if enacting a progressive dinner, searching for signs of surviving. Some of us leapt out of windows like high jump horses; spray cans spun on their sides like break-dancers. They shot paint into the officer’s face, his eyes bleeding his blindness. Savages. The paddy wagon cage let in the city air, thick and stifling and real.
We submitted names and far away homes. Undressed. They gave us tracksuits; the brown fleece caressed my limbs. The watch-house roof fell on me like a marble domino. Small chrome sink in the corner: toilet and washbasin. Two metal bunk beds stuck out of render like forklift trays. Symmetrical bars framed the dark place where train tracks met. I drew the government-issue, cactus blanket over my face and dreamt of places, away from winter and walls.
Windradyne was angry. There was betrayal. There was war. Sharp spears through thick skin. He rose from the rivers; he was a warrior, a fighter. I felt his rage. Windradyne fought in the stories of backlash and of lore and of horror. Whispering their importance. He bled for all of us mob.
I saw Windradyne that night; he visited the polished cement freezer box where I lay. Together we looked out past the grey glue melancholy and into the diamonds in the canvas of night. He pointed up to the clustering stars and back at me. His eyes were black deep-sea pearls; he tried to say something with them. I couldn’t understand and bent my neck back up at the cradling dome. The stars scattered free and became sea birds, their wings brushing through the sky, long necks pointed upward, carving lines and unzipping the wet universe. Under its blanket was water, flowing, and blue shimmering. The water did not fall, instead it suspended.
Windradyne faded from my side and I stood lost in my thoughts as they swam through the shifting sea.
Maybe it was too much paint or too much goon. Whatever it was, Windradyne had shown me, letting me in on something important. I didn’t know what it all meant. The sky showing the journey the waters make, the tracks, the beds balancing liquid from cloud to crevasse. Follow the leatherback turtle through tide, the waterbirds fly between currents. I knew I had to get out of the city, get out of the boxes they put you in.
The cell was silent and crying. Far off there were only hollow echoes. Morning’s blue-grey light defined corners and captivity. Footsteps stalked the ‘safe space’ between salvation and the street.
‘Wake up, on your feet, May Gibson. You straight yet?
’ The uniform stood strong in the narrow corridor.
I sat upright on the metal tray and rolled the barbed blanket in my lap, bug-eyeing the sullen shadow.
‘No charges this time, your four hours are up.’ She passed my clothes through the metal grate. ‘Get changed, get out.’
Outside the turf lapped at my feet. Suits and handbags began to fill the emptiness of morning. I could see Joyce’s rooftop from the grass; I knew I needed to see Johnny. I knew I had to leave this place. We both did. Leave the people grieving through sleepy eyes, those only faintly dreaming. I needed to go to the water where it drew up on the riverbank and sand. I needed to listen to the dreams.
The front door is open; I walk inside the empty house and up the stairs. I know Johnny will be there. I know he will be waiting. Joyce is out this morning, morning tea in the elders’ room at the community centre. I climb the last stairs and push open the door. Johnny sits on the edge of his bed, packing a bong.
‘Hey, Wantok, thought I’d never see you again, you got caught?’ He laughs his head off. ‘You one of us now, May, you’re a fuckin criminal like the rest of us.’
‘No I’m not!’
‘Yep, you are, a no-good streetie criminal!’ He laughs more. ‘You need to be controlled, Wantok.’
He puts the bong down and wrestles me to the bed. We’re laughing.
‘So whatcha doin? You going back to the squat, I don’t reckon you should. Too many pigs go round there, I reckon Joyce will let ya back.’ He picks the bong back up, nurses it in his hands.
‘Nah, I’m leaving, I’m doing what we said we would. I’m goin to country, I’m goin to find family.’
‘Yeah?’ He lights the cone piece, pulls a bong.
‘Yeah! Yes. How exciting, May, that’s great – you could be at least half pissing your pants!’
‘It’s good, May, just miss ya, ya know.’
‘Well come with me, that’s why I came here, to get you, we can go the Cape and hitch in a boat or something. We can go to Waiben, find your old man. Go there first if you want and then out west or whatever. Let’s just go – together. You coming?’
He licks his lips, stares at the bong and then inspects around the room full circle and back at my face. We meet eyes that know.
‘I can’t, Wantok. I can’t go, May, they were just dreams, they still are. I got stuff to do here.’
‘Like what? Get ripped?’
‘Fuck off. You don’t get it, you don’t get that we stuck here!’
‘I get that you got two legs and somewhere you want to be!’
‘Nah you don’t get it, that we fucking prisoners of our own prison. Gangsters Paradise, this all it is. We don’t go nowhere. Just go, May.’
Near the doorway I turn around to him, pink eyed. ‘You know what, Johnny; I get that you just gunna stay nobody. You ain’t gunna move to change anything, not for nobody else and not even for yourself. Ever thought about it? Johnny Smith – John Smith, that’s a nobody’s name, you’re a fuckin nobody like everyone else!’
‘Yeah? That’s all right with me – nobodies don’t need no one either! See ya, Wantok, see ya later!’
And I leave, with our dreams spilling at our feet.
Mapping Waterglass
The coins rolled under my slipping fingertips like greasy piano keys. It was three bucks sixty for hot chips at road stops so I had to break the twenty, which left me with more shrapnel sweating in the thrashing heat of day. Long, straight, flat, sea of black, its end a blur of hazy refuge. Caressing the road from either side, open unchanging grassland of scattered trees like bunyas. The few branches and leaves hovered over cattle, casting broken shadows that let in most of the light shine. The land a basin of scorched anguish.
A summer storm cloud swerved onto the gravel shoulder; grey dust swept across the paddock of saline orange orchids and blankets of white mini daisies. A man made up of forearms, winched himself out from the swung-open door of the ute.
‘I’m heading to Wyalong, need a lift, kid?’
‘Lake Cowal – goin that way?’
‘Yeah, we’ll get there.’ He threw his stubble chin toward the passenger side. ‘Get in.’
We drove the melting road for hours. Gary told me about his wife being pregnant and how happy they were, how they’d both grew up in Wyalong and left years ago only to return. Now they have a house out here and a butchery in West Wyalong that his family have run for so long that he can’t remember, and how he once hitched and he knew how hard it was and he’s also happy to help people out, also it makes the drive go faster, having someone to talk to and all.
‘Hey, you like music?’ He didn’t need an answer and pushed the tape in with his fat thumb.
‘Van Morrison, mate, a bloody legend.’ He puffed on his belief. ‘You know it?’
Pain fled from the box I stored it in. ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ would be my crucifix, my funeral song. Memories of my mum cruising the coast road, her thin dark forearms resting against the buslike steering wheel, the afternoon light flashing between trees against the deep bone dents of her eye sockets. Me, riding the front seat and staring out at the wide blue ocean, shy and hoping to catch a glimpse of a whale. The humpbacks would travel up the coast to give birth and then in the summer, with their new calves, would slowly shift back down in the warmer Pacific, playing and feeding along the deep stretch from Sydney to Woonona. Mum’s stories were sad, she could only whisper their importance, instead she’d show you them, take you there. She’d show you Byamee, she’d show you his work, how it was made. Whale swimming the cool currents, cursing jellyfish, still angry about losing his canoe and being tricked by the other animals. The whale had held his pain, like Mum had. And like I have.
My mum’s half-decent sing-along voice bellowing through the Kombi, you’re my brown-eyed girl ... and we used to sing. The words were always sung like a testament to the memory, song lines to ease her absence, knowing the impermanence of our company, saying I’m still here.
‘Yeah, I like Van Morrison, always heard it as a kid, that and Archie...’
His unknowing eyes smiled at me.
He lit his stories with the red brevity of match-heads. The one about his old mum who’d broken her hip a couple of years ago, never ageing as gracefully as they’d wished. The docs gave her pethidine for the pain. Pethidine to morphine, morphine to more pain, gracing her instead with addiction.
I listened as he took me to her bedside, one last tear dribbling like ripples in slow rapids over sun-burnt pastoral lines. Happy lines, sometimes sad.
He fumbled along the dash, finally spitting flint onto cigarette to mask his bloodshot eyes. He shook the pack toward me like offering black jellybeans. Our conversation gently evaporated with the smoke rings like halos over hurt. The whale held his pain, like Gary had.
‘They call this place Bland Shire – can’t half guess why.’ Gary choked on his lung and laughter.
Through the sun-etched windshield, brown heritage buildings with bodgie white stone trimmings stood like dead boab trees. Women in high-waisted stonewash jeans and tucked-in blouses gathered outside the school gates, digging their hands in tight pockets, laughing and flipping their big floppy fringes about.
‘People never leave places like this, they stay the same – same neighbours, same friends, same shops, same small-town bullshit. Should change once the mine goes through, few new faces wouldn’t hurt ... Lake Cowal’s about twelve k’s.’ He spun the wheel and we kept on down the highway, watching moths meet their deathbeds against the glass. ‘Give ya me number, can stay with me and me missus, we’d be happy to have ya. She cooks a bloody good roast that woman!’
The lacquer of pink sweat over his grin. He had the kindest smile I’d ever seen. I thought he could easily knock me out with his huge arms, but I knew he wouldn’t.
‘Yeah, thanks, see how I go, might want to stay waterfront for a while...’
Gary interrupted my daydreams of Windradyne, pointing at the sky of dark cool water shifting ac
ross a lake, brolgas skimming along its surface, sunset, sunrise reflecting.
‘You know about the mining compound, ha?’
‘Nah, what?’
He nodded toward the entrance. ‘You’ll see.’
We pulled up in front of the barbed fence that wrapped itself around the plane of grass and small bush. Gary shone headlights on high beam against the big glossy sign.
BARRICK GOLD CANADA LTD
NOTICE OF EXPLORATION LICENCE
FOR COWAL GOLD PROJECT
‘They’re gunna do it, can’t stop em. About three thousand hectares they’re gunna dig. Gold you see, money makes the world go round, kiddo. Big guns like these guys, little guys like us, can’t budge em, and not even the black fellas out there at the blockade can stop em, saying it’s a sacred site and all...’
‘Where’s all the water?’
‘Water!’ He grunted an absurd laugh. ‘Last time that lake had water I would have been not much older than you. There must be water somewhere under there though; otherwise they wouldn’t dig, hey?’
‘Yeah, thanks for the lift, Gary.’
‘No worries, kiddo, you give us a phone call remember. Only a phone call away, we’ll come pick ya up, ok.’
He dropped the scrunched up piece of paper and five dollars in my hand. We exchanged silent goodbyes as he slammed the gearstick into reverse and left.
The afternoon sun smothered its rays among the saltbush, honey grass danced in the skylight. A slaughter of crows and resident bats swept the expanse of sky. The crows surveyed decay. Even in the fighting city air they still bred. The bats would soon die; the crows began to nest.
Swallow the Air Page 6
