Heart of the Grass Tree

by Molly Murn

  The sea is bruising; the sky is monochrome. I can’t stop now. I gather the strings of periwinkles and place them around my neck. Dear Aunties, give me words. I take a spoonful of honey.

  They took the baby away. But first they took me away. To the mainland, to a place where girls like me were sent. I had no idea what was going to happen once the baby came. Not where the baby and I would go, and certainly not what would happen to my body. The policy was to tell us nothing, to protect us from what they knew would tear us apart, I suppose. But we should have been given warning. I was meant to feel ashamed of my swelling body like Mother and Father were, but I spoke to that baby every minute, and I was beautiful. If only Sol could see me now—and why won’t he write—I remember thinking. My darkening nipples, my glossy hair and my heat my heat. I had never felt so isolated; I had never even left the island, but now there were two of us, and that gave me some comfort, and with Sol we were going to be three. I imagined that once the baby was born, Father would come and take us home, and that when he laid eyes upon the child, he would forgive me everything, and somehow Sol and I would be allowed to make things work, and that we wouldn’t have to give the baby away to a good Christian family.

  I don’t remember much of the birth at all, except the incredible bearing down pain and crying out, and putting my hands down there, to try to hold myself together, and the blood on my fingers, and the nurses holding a strong-smelling rag under my nose, shoving it in my face, and the waking up in an empty room with hard full breasts and a burning between my legs and no baby no baby and somebody screaming. Now, as I write this, I know that it was my own scream that I heard. There I’ve said it! This is the centre of all that’s been petrified. An impression of grief hidden in strata.

  They took the baby away immediately. I never even saw a glimpse of it.

  I look up and realise it’s been hours. My shoulders ache. There is a sailboat right in the centre of the bay—it is a distraction—like a prickle caught underfoot. Something in the way. I feel nauseous. And I’m burning hot. My body remembers even though I’ve tried to forget. Sol. Cellular memory. I should eat something more than honey. But I can’t move. All I can do is keep sitting here. Write this.

  I was seasick, like now, the entire journey home from the mainland back to the island. The ketch reeled from side to side and I scraped the dried blood out from under my fingernails in between retching. My breasts dripped milk; I was hearing my baby faraway hungry. We needed each other. Tears and blood and milk and my words, just all leaked away. Wasted. Til now, til now, til now. At least give me back the words. Mother rocked me like a baby on that long journey home, realising the gravity of what she’d made me do, crooning and whispering in my ear, crying into my hair, but my heart was closed to her. My heart was closed full stop. Brittle as dry honeycomb. When we arrived back at the farm the first thing I noticed was that the bee boxes were ruined. There’s been a terrible storm, my mother explained. Oh, don’t I know it, I thought to myself.

  I hold this moment gently. I want to be unstopped. I’ve never spoken of this. Not to my husband, Reg—he came years later, darling Reg—not to my daughter, Diana, not even to Pearl. And not to myself. But lately that child comes to me in dreams. Brown eyes and pursed lips. And Sol, my streak of blue. My sun. They’ve come to give me back my voice again. I trace the length of the story-wire. There is a residue left on my finger. Dirt from our farm, from Sol’s hands, or am I imagining that?

  My mother never kept bees again. Never repaired the broken hives. After that it was yaccas—grass trees. Extracting resin from grass trees for explosives, and for burning in churches—an Antipodean frankincense—and for polishing floors. My mother, stealer of the essence of things. Honey and sap. I weep now for my stolen baby—Samuel, I call him—and for my mother, whom I wasn’t able to let in again. Now these shuddering tears leave me as if without skin. There’s nothing between me and the air, the light, the sound, the heat. Nothing between me and then. Sol.

  And now I remember—deeper still—the last time I saw Sol before Samuel must have been down at the creek, and I would have been pregnant, though we had no idea. He said he’d never seen me look more beautiful. Something’s changed, he said. It was too hot, even for kissing. He took out his pocket knife and gouged our names into the rough bark of a grass tree. A tall one leaning like an old man towards us, its trunk naked, bare-chested. Our names an open wound. I traced my finger gently over the letters knowing even then that this would be the only place those markings would sit together. Nell + Sol. Our tree. Later, after I’d come back home and everything had gone wrong, I found Sol’s name bleeding bright sap. And I remember something else: the day he was stung was the morning after the very last time we made love, beside that tree, though we couldn’t have known it then. That day, covering my hand that held the flannel to his heart, Sol said, The bees are worried for us, Nell.

  And so you see, I was only fifteen. What did I know of love? Only, that in the place where beauty grows and swells, something hard and brittle can also form. To break apart the layers of bedrock, I must go even further back, to a time long before me. And now that I’m finding my way—without skin—I must tell a story. It’s not my story, and it’s not exactly Sol’s, either; it is greater than ourselves, but it belongs to this island and beyond and it belongs in our hearts. This is the vow. Sol, it is our precious thing.

  1822

  Encounter Bay, South Australia

  Anderson knows he has picked an ideal night for the Sabine expedition. Calm, mild, black. With only a scrap of moon up above, he and the men will be able to move under the cover of darkness. A child’s cough punctures the silence as they near the edge of the camp, and Anderson feels a lurch of adrenaline. He spreads his coat on the ground and eases himself down as precisely as a cat stalking prey; the only guiding light is the distant smoulder of campfire. Here he will lie in wait, not sleeping, until the milk-blue dawn finds him crouching on his haunches, spying on the husbands and fathers and brothers who are preparing for their hunt. Anderson’s senses are sharp, honed; he’s never felt so alert. A well-oiled musket, he thinks to himself. He spreads apart the fanned leaves of a grass tree and, peering through, he makes his choice. He wants the woman with the elegant neck and wide, strong shoulders. But his legs are cramping. They must wait so long for the men to disappear through the gaps in the trees. When the mothers and children are finally alone, Anderson gives the signal—an exaggerated nod of the head—and all six men rush in, to drag away their bucking spoils.

  A small boy makes a skittish run from the camp. He is caught. Anderson snaps his arm like a twig across his knee and casts him aside. When Anderson seizes his prize from behind he is surprised at her strength. She clamps her mouth on the fleshy mound below Anderson’s thumb and draws blood. A small girl wraps herself around the woman’s legs and Anderson has to use all of his force to kick her off. He quietens the woman with a punch to her mouth. As he hauls her away from the camp, the girl flings herself around the woman again and Anderson drags them both in the direction of the vessel. At the water’s edge, Anderson slips his hold momentarily and the woman and child make to escape, but he lurches after them and strikes the woman across the back of the neck. He slings her over his shoulder like she’s a seal, and throws her into the cutter along with the other stolen women who claw and bite their attackers. The child follows, too stunned to make a sound, and flails her way to the side of the boat. The woman leans as much as she can over the edge of the boat while being restrained by Everitt, and somehow drags the girl aboard, her mouth bleeding into the child’s hair. Propelling the cutter away from the shore, the sealers jump aboard with expert timing. The women moan and beat at their chests as if their cries alone could bring down the sky. Anderson is irritated that they have a child with them, but he decides to keep her aboard for now because her presence placates the woman with the bruised and delicate neck. Anderson looks back to the shoreline. The women’s people stand along it, weapons raised, wailing
their grief.

  Chapman River, Antechamber Bay,

  Kangaroo Island

  William watches the negotiations between his father and the other sealers, Munro, Everitt, and Piebald, from atop an upturned dinghy about twenty metres away from the huddle of women. He is particularly fascinated by the small girl, who seems to be as interested in lizards as he is.

  She is crouching beside the women, swapping a tiny, reddish salamander from hand to hand as it crawls over the edge of one palm into the other. William flicks a small piece of quartz with his thumb and forefinger that skids near her feet. She looks up quickly, and he grins at her as he balances on the hull.

  William, get here, Anderson shouts.

  William slides down the edge of the boat and, as he walks past the girl, drops a trochus shell his father collected from King Sound into her lap.

  He turns around and she’s staring at the shell. He wonders if she has ever seen such a shell, with its smooth and lustrous inner lining and its spiralling exterior. The girl kneels up and lets it slide from her lap onto the ground and then edges away from it. The woman who bit his father’s hand yesterday picks it up and turns it over, talking to the other women in a lilting, low voice. The shell is passed around the group, each of the women examining it carefully, whispering. When Anderson and Piebald yank the women to their feet suddenly, the shell thuds to the ground. William can’t help but notice the boiled-meat colour of the men’s hands against the polished black of the women’s skin. They’ve even been given names—Emue, Poll, Mooney, Puss. He mouths the names to try to remember them. Picking up the abandoned shell, he wonders what the women said about it, before running to keep up with his father, who calls for him like he’s one of the dogs. The girl runs in and out from between the women—restless shadow—as they are herded to the beach.

  She can’t come with us, Anderson announces as he blocks the girl from getting into the cutter. The women are frightened and exhausted and beyond protest, and they gesture for the girl to wait behind. William tries to smile at her, he wants to tell her that they will be back before nightfall, but she won’t look at him. He hopes that she will not spend the whole day crouching on the shore staring past the headland to where the boat has disappeared. The sun could eat you alive on a day like this.

  Maringani watches the child from a distance. Kringkari kop, her brothers call the pale men. Spirit people. Noses come first. Sniffing out the women. The pale boy is crouching by the fire, resting his elbows on his knees and cupping his chin in his hands. The kringkari looks solid, real, like he would be warm if she touched him. He looks kind. She wonders what his skin feels like. The pale men are around, too. One of them sits beside the boy and appears to be making something in the fire. Some of them are walking about tearing off chunks of what looks like meat with their teeth and chewing noisily. Others are smoking or talking loudly over piles of skins. The man by the fire hands the boy something to eat and ruffles his hair. The kringkari eats like he is alive, not like he is a spirit. He glances up and meets her gaze and she ducks behind a ti-tree. Maringani’s heart quivers, like that of a caught bird.

  She watches the kringkari approach with an offering of food. He says something to her, but she can’t make out the words; they are stones rattling in a basket, but his voice is gentle.

  Maringani is surprised when he somehow wriggles out of his shirt, drops it in front of himself and places the food on top of it. She turns away from his smile and she hears him make his way back to the fire.

  The smell of the offering, which looks a bit like wiloki, makes Maringani’s stomach lurch and growl. She snatches up the morsel and runs to the women. Maringani shows it to Emue, who smells it, takes a small bite of the roasted potato, nods, and then passes it on to share with the other women. Emue gestures Maringani to stay close, and holds her gently under the wing of her arm. Maringani feels that she holds her too tightly, but she leans in, hoping that if she is still enough, Emue will stop whimpering.

  King George Beach (Sandy)

  There is a moment between sleeping and waking where everything is silver. Before orientation. A threshold of possibility. Calm. Then slowly Pearl remembers who she is, what time it is, what day it is, what must be done. She remembers that Nell has died. She tries to lengthen the silver moments by keeping her mind as empty as a stone. But then awakeness rushes in and it hurts. An avalanche.

  Lucy—little sister—is beside her on the bed. She is holding Pearl’s hand, running her thumbs over the tops of chipped fingernails.

  You need to file your nails, Lucy says. Let’s paint them later, too.

  How long have I been asleep?

  Oh, quite a while now. I came in to see if you wanted some lunch, and you were whimpering in your sleep, so I lay down with you.

  God! I am so tired. From—

  I know. I know. Ssshhh.

  There is the jolting thud of children running in the hallway. There is the clatter of dishes. There is the voice of her brother-in-law, Joe, in the kitchen—a soothing bass note, Pearl thinks. There is the clack of Diana’s ridiculous heels. There is the pleasurable static of ocean. The keen of gulls.

  When Pearl arrived a few hours ago, Marian and Red, Nell’s dear neighbours, had steered her through to the lean-to sunroom that Pearl always stayed in, and tucked her up in bed. The room, neat and uncluttered, with its small desk, dresser and bookshelf, and patchwork quilt folded neatly on the end of the bed, always made Pearl think she was somewhere quaint like Anne Shirley’s bedroom at Green Gables. All it needed was a washstand and jug and a vase of waxy flowers, and she could be an orphan grateful for sanctuary. Pearl had closed her eyes to the smell of laundered sheets and wished for no dreams.

  Can you see that face up there on the ceiling? In the knot of wood? Lucy asks.

  Rumpelstiltskin? Yes! He’s always been there. I used to be so afraid of him, sleeping in here. He’s snarling at us, even now. And there’s the maiden spinning gold. Can you see her long floaty hair? How I wished for her hair.

  No, that’s a woman’s naked body. See the curve of her back?

  They laugh, their heads tipping together. Pearl wonders if it’s just sisters that know how to hold skin together. And to stick fingers deep into wounds as well. Pearl would cry except that she’s all dried up. She turns away from Lucy. All in the same room. We need to cry together all in the same room, Lucy had said on the phone the day before. She was right, of course, Pearl thought. But she was a husk, just an outer covering with no moisture, let alone tears.

  Pearl, you know that Marian and Red found Nell?

  Through the window there is just the sea, the scrubby headlands at either end of the small, curved bay and the outcrop of rocks not far from the shoreline that look like a wallaby lying on its side. Nell called it Wallaby Rock and sometimes when the tide is low you can walk right along the tip of the wallaby’s ear and fish for whiting.

  Yeah.

  Pearl thinks of the clot that killed Nell. A piece of grit rushing through channels of blood. Caught in a snag. Damming up the flow. Burst river. That’s all it takes, just one little snag.

  Alfie calls for Lucy and, hot-wired to his demands, she lets go of Pearl’s hand and then pads out of the room. I’ll make you a gin and tonic, she says as she leaves.

  Pearl sits up and pulls off her clothes, tossing them in the corner of the room. She is suddenly hot from sleep and worry. Sweaty from travel—an early flight from Melbourne to Adelaide and then a bus to Cape Jervis to catch the ferry—she wants to start over. Wash this day away in the ocean. Rummaging in her suitcase for her bathers, she catches a glimpse in the dresser mirror and straightens to look properly: smooth white and golden-freckled. Dark around the eyes. Small high breasts. Plum nipples. Stomach not as flat as it used to be, she thinks. And pubic hair wilder and scragglier. She smooths her hands over her bottom as if to press it into a more held-together shape. The light catches occasional strands of silver in her already pale hair and she winces. Pearl snatches her bathers
and quickly pulls them on, wiggling to stretch the fabric over her hips. She ties her hair in a knot at the base of her neck and has a final glimpse in the mirror as she slips on her sandals without doing them up. She wonders at her face sometimes. She thinks, It’s me but so much older.

  In the living room, things are calmer than when she first arrived. Marian and Red were baking all afternoon in Nell’s kitchen, but now they’ve gone back home. Ginger muffins, Marian’s specialty, cool on a wire rack. Ariel is playing with Nell’s collection of sea treasures, making families out of shells and sorting smooth stones from jagged ones, and clear ones from opaque ones. Ariel has divided the glass into piles by colour. Turquoise, navy, green, black, amber, milky. And she has built a barricade of cushions around herself to deter Alfie from interrupting, but he is happy enough playing with his animal figurines. Joe is juicing limes and whistling and Lucy is at the table scribbling things down.

  I’m making a list of things we still need to do, she says.

  Like what?

  Like, ring the funeral home about flowers. They have to be native. Um, borrow more wine glasses from Red and Marian; work out running order. That kind of thing.

  Right. We should pick our own flowers. And what about Uncle Jim, did you get in touch?

  Is Uncle here now? Joe asks, holding a bunch of mint leaves under the tap and spraying water everywhere. Turn the tap down a bit, Pearl thinks.

  He’s staying with his niece Caroline over near Murray Lagoon. Arrived yesterday, says Lucy.

  He’s agreed to read the eulogy? Pearl asks, straightening the mat on the floor with her heel.