by Joy Dettman
Honour her. Honour her.
She had no feature that I recall, only the hair and the cold hand that would not hold me. I press my fingers to my eyes striving to see that hand, to grasp its image, but it blurs and washes away like paint from my brush when I stir it in the grey oil spread.
I remember the leaving of her and the crying, and the dark, and the falling, and the knowing that down was the way I must go. Always down. I remember the wandering through rock and rough scrub and the gouging cuts in my flesh and my hopeless weeping until a small light led me in.
Then Granny. Out of the silence, out of the night she came, and her hard hands held me, bathed my wounds and washed my face while I screamed.
Though memory of my mother is scant, Lord, how well I remember Granny. She was the scent of cedar wood and age. She was wild yellow grey hair and her skin, a patchwork of parchment, stretched taut across rigid bones. She was books and a long stick, and in her ending, five granite teeth and blind sapphire eyes. It is an ugly thing, death, but Granny in life was no beauty.
Her stick burned well in the stove; I did not burn her books for they have been my life and I have lived my life within them. I have swum in pools of ancient words, hidden in forests of ancient words that weave for me tapestries of life more wonderful even than the woven scene on Granny’s bedroom wall, where a brown rabbit cowers beneath the green tapestry bushes, hiding from the slavering tapestry hounds.
‘Be a rabbit when they come for you,’ she had said to me many times, so I have become as that rabbit; I cower beneath the misty places of my mind when the grey men come.
Heat hangs heavy today. It clings to the air, burning each breath dry while perspiration prickles, trickles, but to the south the sky is alive. Lightning darts and licks at the earth with its many tongues, and if I breath deeply, fill my lungs, I can smell the scent of water blown down from the hill. I love that scent.
Jonjan smelt of cool water. When I think of his death there is a place deep within me that aches, as my back ached when I was a careless child and fell from my freedom tree. I did not climb so high again. And I will not think of him again. He is dead, so it does no good to think of him, yet today I want to climb my freedom tree, climb high, higher, climb so high like Jack of the Beanstalk so the grey men may never find me again.
They are very small, but very important city men, who wear their names on splendid shoulder ornaments of gold. There is Sidley, Stanley and Salter, though I think it would matter not if they each wore the same name. They are as one. Thin, hairless, grey scalp, grey face, grey overall and grey gloved hands that move me to their will, as Lenny moves a fallen tree to his will. Cut by the screaming city machine, trimmed, drilled often and threaded through with silver wire, that tree becomes a fence support, useful, but dead.
The grey men did not waste time with me last night, for the testing of my heat was not as they wished, thus there was no Implanting. They studied the blue pill container, issued on the night of Jonjan. It was empty. They did not know that their pill container had been emptied into the waste food we feed to the sow. Though this was not the doing of Lenny, it was he who was given much tongue and trouble and threat by the grey men. They do not speak to me.
Previously I have swallowed the city pills and thought little of them; still, I have thought little of much since the grey men came. Now I think. I think of Jonjan, and I think of Pa when he swallows his pills. They are for his aches and when he swallows enough his aches go away and he sleeps where he sits. I have had no aches and I did not wish to sleep so I did not swallow the pills. I also did not drink of my cordial for a day, for Jonjan had grown weary when he drank of it; but an illness came fast upon me, and I felt great thirst for the cordial. So I drank it. It did not make me weary.
I have been thinking much these last days, thinking of time and the great clock at the top of the stairs. Perhaps I will try to set its weights, tease its pendulum into life, make its heart begin to tock-tick-tock once more. Also I am thinking of my belly which is all a flip-flip-flop. I am thinking of Granny’s doctoring book, its separating pages held together by an ancient cord. I have seen that book – somewhere. Perhaps I will look for it.
I did not wish to eat this morning, and I do not wish to eat now, though my stomach yawns with its emptiness. I make a cordial, then stare at the bottle long. There are measuring lines on it, and a foolish top that dispenses only enough to make the colour of the water pink. I like a stronger colour, and it is not difficult to remove that dispensing top so I may pour what I will to my mug. I have used its strong colour also when I paint my pictures, for when the undiluted cordial is mixed with white clay it makes the delicate pink of a remembered flower. I look at the cordial, but can not yet lift the mug to my mouth, for these past mornings the stuff pours out of me so fast when I put it in, and my need for the cordial is bringing with it fragments of a deeper need. There have been moments these last days when this need rises up inside of me and I hear an inner scream coming from within my head. I must not let that scream begin. I must not.
And I think I must not place that mug to my lips; my nose does not much like the smell of it and my stomach rolls as a plasti-bucket in the wind.
I take up the bottle, thinking to sip a little directly from it, for a little in the belly will also be a little to pour out of it. The cordial is thick and of a darker red than blood. My stomach heaves with the thought of it.
Lord. Lord, what is this illness in me? And this thinking, thinking, thinking. I can not stop it. Before the coming of Jonjan, there was no thinking. Before there was . . . was nothing.
My hair, not yet brushed, hangs in clumps. Though I have a fine city brush, my arms do not wish to labour at it. I take up a strand or two of the long stuff and look at its colour, which Granny called red, though it is not red. If I should mix paint to make this colour I would not use red at all, but deep orange, and powdered rust with perhaps a touch of black. I wish it were yellow, as Jonjan’s hair. If it were yellow I would clean it well in the chem-tub and brush it well for him – if he were still amongst the living.
We entwined and were one. He ate of my mouth and the blood in me became fire, and like the fire on the mountain the day I walked with Granny, it exploded and reached so high it set to burning the moons and the stars. Then he drank of the cordial and grew weary. I ran to the chem-tub, washing myself long. I placed my soiled overall in the air-tub then ran to my room where I waited at the window for the grey men’s giant flying machine. No storm nor wind can blow it from the sky. It comes when it wishes to come, bringing with it its own thunder.
It was from my window that I saw the lights go out, from there I heard Pa’s cursing, from there I saw Lenny with his battery light and dart gun.
Then I heard the flying machine.
For a time there was noise enough to herald the end of the new world. The dogs did not know which way to run so they ran in circles. I waited, waited until there was silence, then waited longer for the grey men to come up the stairs.
Such a feeling of blame and sadness is locked deep within me. It gnaws at my heart day and night, like a rat in the barn gnawing its way into the heart of a pumpkin. There was blood in the barn the following morning when I went to see if the beetle machine had gone. It had not gone, and though I tell myself the blood I saw was only the blood of a pig Lenny had slaughtered, in my heart I know it was the blood of Jonjan. I do not know if he died by Lenny’s hands or the city men’s. I do not know where Lenny buried him. Perhaps he sleeps in the woods beside the harmless stranger who came to trade for books but gained only death.
I weep now as I look at the cordial. I weep for Jonjan and the stranger, and I weep for this illness of my belly. Before the coming of Jonjan I did not have this flip-flopping in my belly. I swallowed city pills, drank well of city cordial and swam in the printed words of that old world. And it was better, far better than this thinking, thinking, thinking, this weeping for what is lost.
Defiantly I sip a little cordial
from the bottle, hold it beneath my tongue, allowing saliva to dilute it, and when I think it pink, I allow the sip to slide down. The bottle in my hand, I walk then to the small room which gives entrance to the cellar. I do not walk down the steps, but around the gaping hole to the books that wait on strong wooden shelves.
It is a room of dust, and many oddities, of an old hide-covered chair, of a glass-faced box, of a wooden wheel that one time turned. It is on the box that I find Granny’s Bible and her doctoring book. I take both, take them to the kitchen.
The Bible print is small. I have read a little but its pages are dry as dead leaves, brittle and grey. The handwritten words steal my eye for a moment.
Tom Martin contracted to Emma Morgan.
Aaron Morgan contracted to Dallas Logan.
Jana Morgan 2028.
Anna Martin contracted to Brian Logan.
Peta Logan 2030.
Only names. Too many names, they crush together. Some are written small in black, others in grey pencil. Some have been made by a strong hand, others by the weak. Some have numbers beside them, 2023, and 2096. Some have Nov or Oct. It is a confusion of names and figures. The two non-printed pages are filled with names, and even on the printed pages, where there is space, there are more. Who were these people?
I do not know the answer. I do not know many answers.
The Bible closed, I untie the cord of the doctoring book and carefully turn these worn, but colourful, pages, which as a child I liked well. There are pictures of the body’s bones, of a heart with its piping cut off, pictures of the head and the great nest of worms that live inside the head, and then, there, I see a picture of female breasts and a fat belly. And a foetus inside the belly.
And I think that I have such a thing in my belly, and I think it makes the flip-flopping for it wishes to get out of me, for it should not be in me.
I close that book fast, push it from me. I will not look at it again. I will not think of it. This book will not raise Jonjan from the dead, nor will it tell me how to remove the foetus from within me before the grey men find it with their machines.
‘Lord.’ They will not be pleased with me. ‘Lord.’
I reach for the cordial and quickly sip on the thick stuff. Once. Twice. Thrice.
(Excerpt from the New World Bible)
And in the city streets above the locked building of the Chosen, the storesheds were emptied. And the few who had survived the splitting of the earth and the aftermath and the fires that came from beneath the earth, and those who had survived the ocean’s flood and the plagues, now starved.
And the women became the gatherers and they searched amidst the rubble and they fed their gatherings to the men. And the women squeezed the last of their milk from shrunken breasts and they fed it to their sons.
And their daughters cried: ‘What about me?’
And they died.
And the skies opened and for one hundred days the clouds sent forth a deluge of black rain upon the land and there was great flooding.
And the men saved their brothers. And the women saved their sons.
And their daughters cried: ‘But what about me?’
And they died.
And still God rested.
GIRL
I am making a painting when Lenny comes to my door to cast his shadow across my work. He stands watching. Tonight I am painting the foetus from Granny’s book. It has no life in it, poor unfinished thing, but it obsesses me with its swollen eyelids, its large head and undergrown limbs that lie flat on my painting board.
‘Take your pill.’ Lenny offers a small blue disc. I ignore him, and make another line. I do not like the fat belly and large breasts, so I have freed the foetus and placed it in a crib.
Perhaps Lenny likes the breasts and belly of the book. Certainly the page has more colour and life than my painting. He turns a page, looking at the colours, then turns back to the foetus and the breasts. I do not look at him. He waits long for my brush to still and when it does not, he scratches at his jaw and says: ‘Take your pill, girl.’
Granny always called me girl.
I found a small rabbit once. I called it Tinything. The dogs ate it, and though I still remember its name, does it matter to the dead rabbit? What is a name after all? I come when the men call ‘girl’, as their dogs come when they call ‘dog’.
Why? It is a question which I can not answer. I shrug, and colour the foetus eyelids a darker grey.
Lenny leans closer, places the pill and the mug of water down. I turn, look up at him and see he is not now studying my painting.
Although I eat little, the fastenings of my overall will not now remain closed at my breasts. This is the place where his eyes feast. His hand, finding a mind of its own, reaches out to touch, but he controls it, withdraws it and turns his back.
‘Take your frekin pill, like I tell you!’
‘Why?’ I say the word to him, and I too look down at my breasts.
‘Because they left them for you to take. And they told me to watch you take them, so take the frekin thing.’
‘Why? Is my leg crippled like old Pa’s? Do I feel pain like old Pa?’
‘Because Y is a frekin crooked letter and it can’t be straightened,’ he says, and I laugh at him. He does not know the letter Y. He only mimics old Pa’s words.
And whose words does Pa mimic? He also does not understand the letter Y.
Lenny likes my laugh, or the way it makes my breasts shake. He stares at them, and I think of Jonjan, my breasts pressed hard against his, and, Oh Lord, there comes to me that painful weakness in my flesh, and my hand shakes as I try to close the fastener.
Lenny swallows hard as he watches my hands struggle. Then thunder’s stockwhip lashes the clouds, so close that thunder and lightning are one and the old house shakes with it and we hear glass fall from the burned rooms.
‘Learn to cover yourself,’ he screams and he leaves me. I hear his footsteps running down the stairs and I smile. I believe he fears my breasts more than he fears the grey men’s collective tongue; yet I think he does not fear them when I lay like dead wood on the bed after the grey men have gone; I believe he has studied them with his battery light as he studied the newsprint breasts of the 172 February female and those in Granny’s doctoring book, for I have seen that light creep into my room while I drift in the place of no movement.
When he is gone, I drop the pill into the oil spread I use to mix with my paints; I stir it with my brush, cleansing it while watching the pill dissolve, leaving its threads of blue amid the grey. I like that colour, but I stir and stir it until the blue has all gone into grey.
Outside the world is not grey. Lightning dances, it prances tonight across the dark of our land like a battery light held in the old thunder giant’s hand.
‘It’s down,’ Pa yells from the yard, as our lights go out.
‘Frekin useless city bastards,’ Lenny screams now at the generator, the fence. ‘If they want me to keep her locked in then they’re going to have to supply something better. There’s got to be something better than frekin wire.’
Feeble city tools; while Granny lived we lived free and had no need of a generator, nor was there wire enough in all of the new world to fence our land; she had owned the mountains and the flat land between the mountains. Now we have fences and not so much land and I am not free, for when the city fences sing I can not climb over, or through, nor can I crawl beneath the barbarous things.
Some nights from my room I hear a fence rejoicing in its barbarity; such singing it makes when a night thing walks blindly into its wires. Wire melodies are created by the wanderer’s struggle, but the struggle is not long. Lenny kills the song and he sets the dogs free. Snarling starving beasts, they rip the entangled ones to shreds, appeasing their hunger on warm flesh, be it sowman or other beast. Perhaps it is better that way; better than to die slowly, welded to those wires, while the fence sings in celebration.
Our house is on high land, halfway to the mountain top.
That is why, when all else was washed away in the powerful flooding of the Great Ending, our house was not washed away and when the rains refused to come and all else died, many of our trees survived. Granny once told me that a swift creek was once born of the springs on Morgan Hill, where water still gushes hot from beneath the rocks. It keeps our tank full. Lenny and Pa walked there often, their giant water barrel drawn by a bullock. Now Lenny must walk there alone with his bullock, for since the grey men’s coming, Pa’s right leg will not carry him far.
The fence cuts through the woods at the rear of our house. Beyond the woods, our land turns to rock and rises steeply, and up and up and up to Morgan Hill, which is a sacred place of many caves where ancient wanderers in those far distant times painted their pictures on rock walls.
From the spring cave, where I once went with Granny to bathe in the waters, our house, with its tall roof and fine chimneys, appeared as a mirage from another world, a genteel lady transported to this time. Her long skirts held high, her pantalets down, she stood below us screaming without voice while black rats chewed at her dancing shoes.
She is only a fine lady from a distance. Daily she is dying. At night her lace-work, still clinging to the front verandah, swings and cries like a captive wraith in the winds, while from the fire-gutted western rooms comes the slow whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of her aged blood striving to live longer, to protect those in her care for another day, another season.
So many have lived and died on this land. The graveyard is full of them. When the storms come they awaken the dead who return to the house where they stand at broken windows, calling to me. I am not afraid of the house ghosts. I wave to them, bow low. They titter and laugh, and Granny’s laugh is loudest of all. She had a fine wild laugh.
For forty years she lived in the city but only the tapestry travelled with her from that place. A huge thing, near big as a wall, it was woven by the many hands of the city females. Granny once said that the sisterhood had sat in a circle, stitching in the threads that trap forever the brown rabbit, the red and white hounds and the owl in the tall gum tree. A thing of colour and great beauty, it still hangs behind Granny’s bed. I know each stitch, each cloud, each ray of sunlight.
