Storyland

by Catherine McKinnon

  Toorung stands. Abe comes up from the shore. Yardah turns away from the men, as if disinterested, but Moomung pulls her youngest boy and girl into her lap. The campfire crackles. Seabirds on the sand begin to squawk.

  The men dismount.

  ‘Have you found Jewell?’ I say.

  ‘We found this,’ Dempster says, holding out the blue brooch Jewell had showed me.

  ‘Jewell were wearing that the other day, Mr Dempster,’ I say. ‘She told me she took it from your top drawer.’

  ‘Never mind that she took it, it’s where it was found,’ Dempster says.

  ‘Where?’ Mary asks.

  ‘In your milking shed,’ Dempster says.

  ‘It must have fallen off her shirt,’ I say.

  ‘What were you doing in our milking shed?’ Mary asks. ‘No one said you could go on our property.’

  ‘Dan asked me to go with him to talk to you,’ Mr Farrell says. ‘And when you weren’t there we had a look around for Jewell, just to set Dan at ease. She could have been hiding in your barn without you knowing. Niall and Connor were with us. Connor didn’t think you’d mind.’

  ‘You know more than you are letting on, boy,’ Dempster says to Abe.

  ‘I know you’re a liar,’ Abe says.

  Before anyone can do anything about it, Dempster steps forward and punches Abe in the stomach. Abe folds over, coughing.

  ‘Dan!’ Mr Farrell yells. ‘Talk to the boy first!’

  Dempster goes for Abe again, hits him on the mouth, then the cheek. Abe falls backwards onto the ground, his cheek and lip cut. Blood runs down one side of his face.

  Mary screams.

  ‘Stop!’ I yell.

  Mary and me run to help Abe up, but he stands, pushes us away and takes a swing at Dempster. Hits him on the jaw. Dempster’s head jolts backwards. Dempster is strong and solid but Abe matches him in height and has a wily fierceness. Abe goes to punch again, but Dempster sidesteps and grabs Abe in a headlock.

  ‘He’s going to kill him,’ I yell, remembering Dempster’s earlier threat.

  I pull on Dempster’s arm while Mary hammers his back with her fists. Dempster tries to shake me off but I cling on. I can see Abe’s face going red. With his free hand Dempster grabs me by the throat and tips my head back. His grip is so firm that I can barely breathe.

  Above us, a white-bellied eagle hovers, looking for prey. I try to pull Dempster’s hand away from my neck. I see the eagle dive to the

  Bel

  1998

  reeds in the lake and get something in its mouth, and and and when it flies back in the air, I can see a fish dangling from its beak. I’m not in front of our house, but in front of Uncle Ray and Maxine’s house. Uncle Ray is not my real uncle, he’s my neighbour, but everyone in our street calls him uncle, even old people. Uncle Ray said it was okay for me to watch for dragonflies out the front of his house. One dragonfly hovers in the air like an insect helicopter. It buzzes across to the water. Behind me, I can hear Maxine shouting at Jason, ‘What’s going on with you?’ Jason is in trouble again. He’s only five and he’s always pinching Maxine’s mascara. He has really really long lashes and when he puts mascara on they get twice as long. Maxine can’t understand why he keeps putting it on. I told her because it looks good and she told me to butt out of family arguments.

  Then she said, ‘Bel, haven’t you got a home to go to?’

  Then Uncle Ray said, ‘Bel, how about you go and watch dragonflies.’

  There, another dragonfly in front of me. Two now. Stick bodies, shiny blue. Glow wings that flicker in sunlight. I sneak through the grass, pulling myself along first with one elbow, then the other, like a soldier in a war film. The dragonflies don’t notice because they’re too busy buzzing each other because because they’re mating! And, and, what happens is the tips of their abdomens touch to form an upside-down heart. It’s like a wonder of nature or something.

  I’ve seen thirteen or six or more upside-down hearts since the holidays began but most of them were after New Year’s Day. It’s definitely a sign. Jonathan doesn’t believe in signs because he says, Bel, a sign from whom? Good question, Dad, how am I to know? I’m only ten. Aiko believes in signs. I do too but not because I take after her. Because there are things in the world we don’t know about. Not even experts know.

  Once, aeons and aeons ago, dragonflies were as big as people. Bigger. Now, they could be like the size of a hand. The dragonflies whoosh in front of me. That’s a sign maybe because it’s now I see the two new boys. They’re rafting out from Mullet Creek. They don’t row like people row in a rowboat but kneel on the raft like the painted boatmen that hang on the walls of the Berkeley Chinese. Berk-e-ley with an e. Between them is a wolf. Looks like a wolf. A white wolf.

  The two boys row to the bit of water in front of me. Their raft is made from old planks of wood. On each corner and in the middle are big drums like drums from the petrol station the ones that are down the back of the garage where the mechanics sit and waste time. The two boys stare at me and so does the wolf. The older boy has eyelids that hang over his eyes like a lizard. His little brother is a puppy dog. Could be if he wasn’t a human. He mustn’t swim yet because he’s wearing floaties. The wolf is huge and has his mouth open and is panting.

  The older boy calls out, ‘Need anything rafted?’

  I stare back at him like I’m a mad person and make my eyes roll about. He could think I’m a ghost. If I were a ghost I might be able to walk on water.

  ‘Need anything rafted?’ Now it’s the younger boy that calls out, like an echo.

  They must think I’m deaf. I know they’re the boys my parents talked about last night because they have funny accents. Because they’ve been living in England since they were like babies. Jonathan said they came back to Australia via India. According to him ‘via’ means road in Latin language but in English language it means travelling through one place when you’re on the way to another. So like ‘via’ used to mean something solid we walk on and now it means pathway, only not not not a solid one.

  Aiko says Jonathan is someone who knows too much and that can get on people’s nerves so it might be better if I try to take after her not him because otherwise I could bore the pants off people.

  ‘Want to ride on our raft?’ the younger boy calls.

  It’s as if he knows I’m going to say yes before I say it because he makes a space for me.

  Aiko told me they live in the bargain swish house at the end of our street. That house had been up for sale for a year then what happened was the price dropped dramatically because no one wanted it because it was overpriced because the people that lived there Lisa and Robert spent too much money on the renovations and thought they would make a million dollars but the the the markets were down so they didn’t make much money at all. I would quite like to live in the bargain swish house because it’s all white inside like a temple and has a big deck out onto the lake with a Buddha on the deck.

  ‘Their father needed some luck,’ Aiko said.

  She was talking about the two boys not Lisa and Robert.

  ‘How come he needs some luck?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh,’ my mum said, ‘we all need luck.’

  She said it like a shrug, like, Oh I’m just saying for saying’s sake, but she gave Jonathan one of her ‘looks’ so I knew there was a secret.

  Whenever I know there’s a secret I want to find it out. I can’t help it. Aiko says I’m a nosy parker and I am a nosy parker because it’s good to know things. I’ve learnt a lot by eavesdropping. That’s how I found out about Lisa and Robert breaking up. This was after Lisa told Robert he was punching above his weight. I love secrets but I can’t keep them. Aiko says I have to practise keeping secrets if I want people to confide in me and if I want to grow up mature. Like I didn’t keep the secret that Aiko’s winter boots were four or maybe six hundred dollars when she told Jonathan they were two hundred on sale.

  According to Jonathan, Aiko is a cliché woman because
she lies about how much her shopping costs. When I grow up I’m not going to be a cliché woman. My teacher, Miss Schubert, says I’m linguistically dexterous and have an overextended imagination so sometimes I don’t listen to what she says or make up my own version of it like a novelist but if I did listen then I’d learn to write stories for money maybe. (She says maybe in a deep voice.) Miss Schubert says making up stories is the best thing I do and I think she is right because I can’t do lots of other things, like I can’t drive or sing in tune or tell the time properly because I can’t really do numbers very well. I’m not stupid, it’s the way I am.

  The thing is, if you want to keep a secret, don’t tell me, because somehow that secret will come out. Like the time Jonathan and I spent the afternoon watching Chinatown, which is a thriller and I’m not meant to watch thrillers, and then watching Casablanca, so two olde worlde films in a row both starting with the letter C and this when Jonathan was meant to be writing his PhD but he couldn’t be buggered because words were doing his head in. And when Aiko came home and asked me what I’d been doing the first thing I said was watching Chinatown and Casablanca.

  ‘Come on!’ The younger boy pats the space next to him.

  The wolf barks.

  ‘Okay,’ I say.

  I roll up my jeans to wade out but then I remember the black sludge. I tell the two boys about it. Step on the black sludge and I could get cancer or die some other way. They use their oars to pole closer. The raft goes one way then the other before it comes my way. I lean out and drop my hands on the wooden planks so my body is like a bridge across water, like the Sydney Harbour Bridge, or a replica of it, but the wolf jumps up, and the raft tips from side to side and rolls away and my body stretches out.

  ‘Isha, careful!’ the younger boy screams.

  ‘Hang on!’ the one called Isha yells.

  I look down and see the black sludge. Some neighbours call the lake a cesspit. But that isn’t right because the water is really clear, like Gladwrap almost. MP, my old person neighbour, says it shouldn’t even be called a lake, because once upon a time it was called a lagoon and that’s a better name for it. The deepest bit of the lake is three and a half metres but in front of our house it never gets above a metre. MP knows history and history is specific facts about olden days only, according to Uncle Ray, MP doesn’t know as many specific facts as she thinks she does. Uncle Ray says the lake was once full of fish and it was a refrigerator for everyone who camped on the banks in the olden Aborigine days before refrigerators. Aiko says, Good news is our house sits between Uncle Ray’s and MP’s, otherwise it would be World War Three every day. Along our street it goes the bargain swish house, then Betty the Greek, then the Zoia family with the one-legged cat, the Skarschewskis, Mr and Mrs Lin, the Wilsons, MP, us, Uncle Ray and Maxine, Lenny-the-biker, the Haddads (Nada and Sara live there but they’re not allowed to play with me because Mrs Haddad says they are too young) and last, the two Angelas with the red car.

  The older boy rams his oar into the lakebed and pushes the raft forward so it slams into the bank. I fall onto the raft and the two boys stare at me as though I’m an alien dropped down from the sky.

  ‘You’re a girl,’ the older one says.

  ‘So?’ I say, sitting up.

  ‘You look like a boy,’ he says, and laughs like it’s funny.

  ‘You look like a girl.’

  We squint at each other and I take three deep breaths, because that is what Aiko told me to do when I get cross.

  ‘It’s because your hair is so short,’ the older boy says. ‘It’s like a soldier’s hair.’

  ‘My dad cut it,’ I say.

  ‘This is Zeus,’ the younger boy says, patting the wolf.

  I look into Zeus’s wolf eyes. Not scary eyes, not friendly either. His front legs could crush me but his shaggy white fur is soft so I pat his paw and he nuzzles his nose into my neck. Which just goes to prove the old saying never judge a book by its cover.

  ‘I’m Isha,’ the older boy says, ‘and this is Tarak.’

  ‘Do you want to go scare the horse girls?’ Tarak asks. ‘They bring their horses down to our spot at the creek. We don’t like it because it’s where we put our raft, so when they come there next, we’re going to run out of the bushes and go raaah.’

  Tarak uses his hands to scratch at the air and raaahs like a lion.

  I screw up my nose. ‘That will only scare them if they’re like six months old.’

  ‘I know,’ he says, ‘but then we’ll get Zeus to attack them.’

  Zeus flops down and puts his head between his paws. I pat him again.

  ‘He’s ninety per cent wolf,’ Isha says.

  ‘What’s the other per cent?’ I ask.

  Isha shrugs.

  ‘Pussy cat?’ I say and laugh.

  Tarak laughs too but Isha lifts up his chin which I can tell is code for I-am-not-amused. People have codes which I’m currently fascinated to study because if I’m going to be a novelist then I need to unravel people codes. Or, I could be a marine biologist because I’m also fascinated by the virus called viral haemorrhagic septicaemia virus that attacks fish in the Baltic Sea so they die in droves and no one knows where it comes from or why the fish get it but whole populations die and then they drift, dead in the water. Only if I’m going to be a marine biologist I might have to go all the way to the Baltic Sea, or to Queensland to study dead coral reefs, and I might miss my parents.

  ‘Do you want to scare the horse girls or not?’ Isha asks like it’s a challenge and I can never say no to a challenge because unfortunately or fortunately I have a competitive nature. So I agree to go and forget that I made a promise to Jonathan and Aiko to stay within cooee of our backyard.

  I’ve never been on a raft before. No one that lives by the lake actually goes on the lake except for Lenny-the-biker who has a bathroom that is all black tiles and gold taps. His whole house was built from drug money but no one says that out loud in case Lenny’s gang torches their house. Lenny says that if I drink the lake water I’ll grow six fingers and if I swim in it my skin will go red, just as if I’d been burned. He thinks I’m a dumb kid who will believe anything he says but I’m not that kind of dumb kid.

  I let my legs dangle over the edge of the raft to test whether they’ll go red but they only get goosebumps from the cold water.

  ‘I’m seven going on eight,’ Tarak says, ‘and in England I saw a hedgehog.’

  He tells me all the things he and Isha have done without my asking. Like how they’ve been on a plane that flew over the Indian and Atlantic oceans and how on the plane they had small cans of coke half the size of the ones in the shop. Like how they’ve ridden elephants, which is like riding a really fat fat huge horse, and how they’ve fed squirrels from their hands.

  I tell them all about dragonflies, like how they can flap their wings thirty times a minute and fly up and down and backwards and probably sideways as well and like how in Germany they used to get called wasserhexe which means water witch or teufelsnadele which means devil’s needle.

  Isha says he’s never seen a dragonfly fly sideways and anyway he and Tarak have decided to be explorers when they get older and will probably go to Germany.

  If I’m a novelist not a marine biologist I’m still not going to be a girl girl and have a wedding because I don’t want to look like a cake and because because I want to live on my own and make up my own rules.

  Tarak says they only have one rule in their house which is completely unbelievable as we have about a thousand. The one rule is no one is allowed to say no. If they get told to go to bed they can just answer with a question. One of Isha’s questions might be, Can I have one more hour before I go to bed?

  If I said that to Aiko she’d say no, but their dad is not allowed to say no so what happens is he has to say something like, You can have one more minute.

  It must be strange in their house, question after question and no answers. It would probably get extremely complicated.


  Isha says it makes them negotiate and his dad is a big negotiator.

  I ask if their mum is allowed to say no and Isha shrugs as if he doesn’t know the answer to that question and Tarak says, she doesn’t count because she’s dead.

  I look at Tarak’s eyes because that’s a good way to guess about a human being’s interior emotions. If someone’s eyes go up they’re thinking something serious, if they go down and to the side they’re lying. I learnt that from a TV program. Lying is different to storytelling which is like a lie only a lie everyone knows is meant to be a lie. Tarak’s eyes are in the middle, not up or down. I don’t remember what the program said about eyes that are in the middle. Isha’s eyes are squinty and up.

  ‘Mum’s ashes are on Dad’s bedside table.’ Tarak stops rowing. ‘In a thing like a jar but not a jar.’

  I glance at Isha but he turns away and pulls his oar through the water and we row in a circle.

  ‘We’re going to find a tree in the forest up on the mountain, near where Dad took Mum on their first date, which wasn’t like a real date but was a big long walk, and when we find the tree we’ll just sprinkle her around it,’ Tarak says.

  He makes a sprinkling motion with his hand as though practising for the event and smiles at me.

  I wouldn’t be smiling if Aiko died. I wouldn’t be smiling if Jonathan died. I’d rather they went into a cocoon and became butterflies if that were possible which it probably isn’t but who knows, strange things can happen in the world of science.

  ‘Once upon a time human beings died from having a cold or the flu and now you don’t,’ I say to Isha and Tarak.

  Isha tells me his dad is a doctor and in history in England human beings didn’t know that germs made you get a cold or the flu and when doctors first started to deliver babies all the babies died and the doctors said it was because the women were immoral but later they, the doctors that is, discovered it was because they, the doctors, didn’t wash their hands.

  Tarak says their dad washes his hands all the time.