Taboo

by Kim Scott

  ‘Our old grannies lived here with white people. Give us this life, hard for them. We got the stories someone wrote down for them, and words of our daddies and uncles long gone, and from Milton and Wilfred and me . . .’ The old men were nodding agreement as she spoke. ‘Been working it out, putting it together, so we can, what we need to do . . . And Jim, too, him and the boys inside . . .’ Tilly felt a little thrill of pride at her father’s name. Nita continued on, ‘And Jim’s girl, Tilly, she was taken away but she’s another one come back too.’ Less thrilled now. Mortified maybe.

  Kathy nudged Gerry. Jump-started, he began speaking. ‘Wadjelas, all Australians, this is what they’re gunna want to know. Some of them do already, the good and clever ones. Blackfella stuff, it’s not just up north in the desert, it’s here and we’re the ones to be passing on how to really belong here . . .’ Gerry seemed transformed. He might almost have been an evangelist; you could see the passion bubbling in him, bursting out.

  ‘Can’t stay away from here. If we’re connected to all the old people killed, they’ll be happy we’re back. ’Cause in the old days hardly anyone was able to get back, and if they were here, well . . . But we can bring back the language and the old stories, here, to the massacre town.’

  Tilly saw the little cross on that pioneer’s grave. The creek bed, the banks of sand, the brimming well.

  ‘Before he passed away, Jim got off the gear. He said this is who he really was, Wirlomin, not the lock-up and the violence and the gear and the kids he never looked after properly . . .’

  Tilly was impassive. Like a rock not weeping.

  ‘We gunna do any fishing the next few days?’ Beryl was still carrying her baseball bat.

  Gerry kept going. ‘Maybe. But we gotta work out what to do at this Peace Plaque opening.’

  ‘Reconciliation,’ someone yawned.

  ‘Peace Park,’ said another.

  ‘Cup of tea now,’ Kathy said. She, and Nita now too, with their cheeks wet.

  Moving toward the urn and the packets of sweet biscuits Tilly heard someone ask Beryl, ‘So, we all getting paid? Or just the special ones again?’

  ‘Oh fuck off, Angela, or I’ll learn you.’ Her baseball bat twitched.

  Someone moved next to Tilly. She turned. No one there. Then one of the Gerrys moved into the very space she’d thought already inhabited. Gerald? She clenched her hands so the fingernails pushed into her palms. There would be crescent marks, her young skin broken.

  The twin stood near her for a time. She didn’t look at him, kept her attention on the front of the room. It was a long time before he spoke.

  ‘You ok, Tilly?’

  She turned. For a moment was seeing double. Except the clothes were different. Long sleeves, and no tattoo to be seen.

  Tattoo to be to be taboo.

  Someone wanted a cigarette.

  A hand brushed her shoulder as the men left.

  She took a biscuit. Nibbled. It was filled with what was meant to be jam and cream, a disk each side. The disk was patterned with tiny rectangles and circles. It was like mud in her mouth. She took another tiny nibble. Chewed and chewed.

  She looked around for cups. Spat into one she’d found. Now? She wanted privacy. Where could she run to? She studied the room; it needed tidying. A biscuit had fallen to the floor. Was broken, had been stepped on. She went to look for a broom, a dustpan and brush. Something.

  Next thing there she was, patting at small bleedings. Washing her hands, studying her reflection. She couldn’t see a resemblance to any of them. She looked like her mother, everyone said. What would they know? Call them family? She was an orphan.

  *

  Wilfred was explaining the piece of cloth, once again neatly draped over his shoulder.

  ‘Wear it all the time,’ he said. ‘Bird shits on your shoulder, doesn’t even think about it. So, when he’s with me this protects my shirt; but when he’s not with me, I miss him and this helps,’ he said. He twisted, reached to this shoulder and suddenly the parrot was in his hand, flapping and squawking. ‘Hello, sweetheart,’ it said. Then spoke in the old language, asking, ‘Do you understand me?’ in that old tongue. Not able to understand, Tilly stepped back.

  Shamefaced, she realised the old man had somehow animated that piece of cloth and, with the semblance of a beak and eyes and voice, brought it alive. He’d done it earlier today, but this was even more realistic, and she was not the only one deceived.

  Wilfred was pleased with the reaction, pleased with himself.

  ‘Words, see. It’s language brings things properly alive. Got power of their own, words. Some more than others. You’ll see, you’ll see proof soon enough.’

  Wilfred carried on like this a bit too much for some, the older women told Tilly. That’s from all that time he was a pastor, lining up his girlfriends.

  *

  The little crowd gathered on one of the chalet verandas. Well, they would have, except they didn’t all fit, and so some stood on the ground and, arms parallel to their shoulders, leaned against the veranda railing. Others were on the steps. A few more were inside the chalet itself, just the other side of the connecting door. In one corner, standing on timber flooring, Ruby and Kathy gave instructions.

  They’d all be kept busy; a range of activities had been planned, Ruby said, trying out some things we’ll do later, led by some of our community people, and we’ll develop a program for camps for school kids, and for rehab and other groups. Culture and Community Development, she said, the capital letters loud in her voice. She repeated this phrase many times, along with Funding and Program of Activities. Plus, a lot of the mob just need to Keep Busy. One day, she said, we’ll have workshops on art, making artefacts, story and song. Try some of those things ourselves, then tomorrow, or maybe the day after, she said – like promising dessert after you’d eaten your vegetables – we’ll be visiting some Significant Sites.

  This was a Special Occasion, she finally said. Main reason we’re here is the opening of the Peace Park. It’d be deadly to do a presentation, you know, she said once again, a Cultural Presentation. Reconciliation, someone said. Acknowledgement.

  ‘Milton, you’ll speak, won’t you?’ Milton nodded noncommittally. ‘Wilfred?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘We’ve planned some lovely walks. Some of the boys slashed paths. Lovely walks. Our old people used to walk everywhere. No diabetes, no heart disease, no mental health issues with them.’

  ‘But, we can’t do all that.’

  ‘We’re planning for the future. Culture and Community Development,’ and again she said, more emphatically, ‘Acknowledgement. Reconciliation.’

  They moved away, coalescing in little groups. Ruby and Kathy, with Wally a less enthusiastic recruit, shepherded them from place to place.

  *

  Tilly hoped to hide away, but it meant so much to Gerry.

  They sat around the fire in thin sunlight. Cups of tea and instant coffee. ‘Breathe in the smoke, ’cause no smokes or nothing allowed unless it’s a break and you walk way to fuck . . .’ The fire burned slowly, the wood blackening, red and grey, reshaping . . . The ash was so very fine. A thin line of smoke rose. It was sweet, that smoke.

  Someone started singing. Someone in the group? No, a little further away. Softly, one voice. Some song, Tilly guessed, in the old language. A couple of voices joined the first. Tilly glanced at Gerry, who only raised his eyebrows.

  A stick landed on the edge of the fire, near the centre of their circle. A little puff of ash hung in the air.

  They turned toward the sound of a voice calling in what Tilly assumed was the same tongue. She was getting to her feet. And then, more familiar, but nevertheless strange.

  ‘Toodle-oo. Tiddle-pip!’

  A hand – waving, rotating at the wrist, isolated and disconnected – was hovering above the white screen that
had been set up next to the annexe. They could discern a rough human shape behind the screen, beneath the hand. And then it was this figure that held their attention. The hand disappeared, and the dim figure on the screen bent to pick up something from the ground. Straightening again, it seemed so much taller, and seemed to have too many limbs to be human; limbs that moved and bent strangely. The creature kept moving right to left, and then, as it appeared from behind the screen, they realised it was Wilfred, and that he was carrying an assortment of sticks and artefacts under each arm.

  He walked to them nonchalantly, as if he was not in fact performing; sat in a chair Beryl had vacated and, while looking around at their faces, kept glancing over their shoulders as if there were other listeners behind them.

  He turned to the woodheap beside the fire.

  ‘This?’ He held out a small branch. ‘Jam tree they call it.’ And he gave its name in the old language. ‘Not just firewood.’ He gestured at the woodpile. ‘Go on. Grab a piece yourself.’

  The little group of people circled a heap of limbs, broken into lengths easy to handle and burn. Some leaves were so thin they might have almost been lashes, and grey and flaking bark had the texture of mud that has dried to a crust that thickens, clutching and puckering as you pull something free of it.

  The circle pulled back to a centre. People sat down again, turned to Wilfred. Who ostentatiously ignored them, staring into the fire, rubbing a smooth piece of the timber, breathing its scent.

  ‘Smell it?’

  Again, he gave them the old word for this tree and its timber.

  ‘Scrape it you smell it better.’

  Wilfred pointed to an old knife, a few pieces of broken glass and stone gathered at one end of the woodpile.

  It was something to do. They scraped, picked away at the wood. Threw chips and fragments into the fire, and little tongues of flame leapt and danced, greedy and grateful.

  Wilfred kept talking. It might even be said that he droned on and on about how that sweet timber’s scent opens your sinuses so that you feel the cathedral spaces behind your cheekbones; go on, breathe it and see how deep.

  Told how our old people danced with fire. Made tentative tongues of flame, great walls of fire race across a plain, fireballs roar through a forest canopy, leaping crown to crown. They trained fire to make the grass grow soft underfoot, and so they would know when and where the animals would be. Kept the bush like a park, easy to travel through. Takes something special to get that clever. He ran his hands over smooth wood; only grows one place in the world, this timber.

  A different grass was under the soles of our old people, once upon a time. The soil was a light ashy skin, from the fire they made year after year, and the soles of your feet broke through its crust. It absorbed the rain, didn’t let water cut so quickly. Our old people, our great-greats, they made it like that so don’t worry too much if we good enough for this this Peace Park thing.

  Tilly had peeled the bark right back from a piece of wood, scraped it smooth and fresh. Secret and quick, she nicked the flesh at the base of her thumb. The little bubble of blood was absorbed, smudged, darkened the sappy timber.

  Tilly was surprised how everyone was so polite; they didn’t interrupt or talk among themselves while Wilfred was speaking.

  Our old people, he was saying again, they sat in the smoke same as we do now. Smelled this same sweet smoke.

  He poked at the ash so that flakes lifted and settled again, fine and light and obliging.

  Used this ash on the babies, like talcum, unna? Made an ash-bed grave for a body before pulling the blanket of earth over.

  Gerry’s leg was bouncing again. Someone was gnawing their fingernails, rapid and rodent-like. Beryl swung a small branch in the air, testing its weight.

  ‘Make a good bat this one. Hurt.’

  ‘These are bits of the same wood,’ Wilfred said. He gave them elaborate pieces of the same timber, smooth and well handled.

  ‘Artefacts,’ someone muttered.

  ‘Devices.’ Wilfred smiled.

  He told them the names in the old tongue, and the words started coming to life with their tongue and their mouths and their breath as they handled that timber.

  They made the sound for the device with which a spear is hurled; for the kangaroo tooth at its end. Spoke the word for the tool to lightly dig the earth, and for how you stoop when you use it as if creeping up on strangers.

  Smooth, imbued with oils and with handling, the crafted pieces of timber lingered in passing from hand to hand. Were warm.

  One shaped and weighted for throwing, for striking. Another made to curve in flight, and say a flock of ducks see it coming they lift their wings, rise from the waters and, well, it turns to follow them. It will come back to you, land in your hand.

  The wind shifted the leaves of the little fence, and a shallow ripple moved across the white screen behind Wilfred. Gerry straightened the leg he’d been bouncing since he first sat down.

  ‘How long would you say the piece you’ve got there is?’

  ‘Thirty centimetres.’

  ‘Fifty.’

  ‘Use your body to tell me.’

  ‘Long as my arm: this bit, my forearm.’

  ‘Two of them joined together.’

  ‘Long as my thigh bone . . .’

  Wilfred swung a thin cord woven of sinew and hair, at its end a small, carefully shaped piece of timber. There was a moaning, a throaty wailing. A song.

  Wilfred slowed his arm and silence returned.

  ‘Can we make that?’

  The old man looked at the woodpile; in the firelight they seemed human limbs. In the fire, the coals were bones.

  Tilly squeezed a piece of timber.

  ‘Fence post an artefact too. Device, whatever word you got.’ He was hauling on a long piece of timber buried in the pile. Gerry got up to help.

  They balanced the post on its end; taller than Wilfred, not quite so tall as the younger man.

  ‘Corner post,’ he said. ‘Jam tree, trunk,’ he explained. ‘Our old people had to cut ’em down with axes – all them empty paddocks, you see – and put ’em up again around the empty spaces. Later on bulldozers, big chains and sand and fire and smoke.’

  The post was grey, rough and weathered. The grain had opened to the air, but the lower parts of its length might still have been moist. A curved length of fencing wire, and a short stab of its barbed companion, were stapled deeply into the surface. A patch of hardy lichen marked one side.

  ‘Only need an axe to make a fence post,’ said Wilfred. ‘Putting them together for a fence is a bit more work, of course. This post here come from a riverbank. Fence busted and washed away in a flood. Half buried in river sand it was. That’s where we used to bury our bodies, on the riverbanks.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  Beryl had poked one of the young ones in the ribs with a digging stick.

  ‘Have a go, see what you can do with your piece of jam tree.’

  There were chisels and planes, axes and sharp blades of stone too. The old people used glass and steel soon as they saw it, just like they saw the use of ships and rifles, and would shin up a telegraph pole to see if they could listen in. But sometimes it’s good to know how they did things also; to put these things in a line, to go to and fro.

  And at this workshop today they talked, the old and the young, as they heated and mixed various things that belonged here: the gum, the kangaroo droppings, the different timbers and stones and sinews and sounds. It was all there, ready for them. They weaved sinew and timber, fused stone and bone and tooth, mingled their breath and the old and the new shapes of their thinking. ‘Remind ourselves of the little things the old people did, the words they used.’ He never stopped, Wilfred.

  He told them more about firewood, and curlew. When a few black cockatoos thrust themselves across the sky in
that jagged rhythm they have and the sunlight caught their flaunted tail feathers, Wilfred spoke their old name and of how, once upon a time, there were so many of them they blocked the sun when they flew, and other things came alive in the strange and feathery light. He gave them the old word for curlew. ‘Never see one, only ever hear them. Camouflage itself, the curlew, and stay still and you never see it. You can pick it up, and it still won’t move. Just like a piece of wood.’

  Wilfred poked at the fire. ‘Need some more here,’ he said. A couple of people walked away and came back with their arms full of wood.

  Timber in their hands, the heat and the blades, the sap and oils and ochre and sweat and the smoke moving, the timber burning and the shredding clouds, the sun in the sky above. It lulled like the murmur of voices.

  Wilfred walked away from the fire. Stood with his back to them.

  ‘What’s that smell?’ And turned back to them.

  They continued working at their pieces of timber.

  ‘Smell? Feathers in the fire?’

  The fire suddenly exploded, and something jumped up out of sparks and coals; eyes, a beak, smouldering feathers, long legs ran from the fire, past Wilfred across the caravan park and disappeared into the scrub. A thin trail of smoke showed the path it took.

  They looked, one to the other.

  ‘Ha!’ cried Wilfred. ‘That’s what I was gunna tell youse!’ He used the old word for curlew. ‘Wirlo, you might pick him up, think he’s just another bit of firewood!’

  ‘Someone did!’

  Tears in their eyes from laughing. Excited talk.

  ‘Thought they were endangered.’

  ‘That one was!’