Heart of the Grass Tree

by Molly Murn

  Maybe. Go on. You can touch the shells now. Just be very gentle.

  But Ariel shakes her head. I don’t want to now, Nanny, they’re too old.

  A tendril of memory floats and settles, and Diana stares at a fixed point on the far wall in order to prevent the memory from vanishing. To let it take hold. She strokes Ariel’s hair, bundling it into a ponytail, and is careful with her memory while her hands are busy.

  The day was overcast and rangy and Nell was determined that the two of them were to go on an expedition. Diana, just thirteen, was reluctant, not wanting to spend that long in the car with Nell, and probably hoping to take advantage of the rare opportunity to be left alone for a while, to listen to singles in the living room at full volume. Well one single, the only one she owned—The Hollies’s ‘Just One Look’—bought from a funny new little section in the Kingscote store, with only just a handful of records to choose from. Not many made their way across the waters to the island. Slim pickings. She’d pleaded with Reg to buy it for her, and he had. But Nell wouldn’t be deterred on this day—Diana was coming with her. Nell packed lunch: honey sandwiches, apples, and a thermos of water with lemon slices poked in.

  The only thing Diana remembers about the car ride, apart from it being long and hot, is that she got her period on the way and Nell hadn’t been very sympathetic, just gave her an old hand towel to shove in her undies, and kept on going.

  You’re not going to let a bit of blood hold you back are you, Miss Diana? Don’t be that kind of girl.

  Sometimes Diana wondered if Nell wished she were a boy. And she couldn’t stand it when she called her Miss Diana, mockingly, as if she were that kind of girl. So, with her belly cramping and the blood drying sticky between her thighs, they bumped along, Diana holding back tears of frustration. When they took the turn-off into the Gill property, just past the Chapman River, Nell slowed the car as they followed the line of dense pines that edged the dusty road. Nell stuck her arm out the window and waved at Alan Gill mowing in the distance as they passed him, having a kind of arrangement with him that she could visit the property any time. On his land was Lubra Creek, a gathering place for Aboriginal women in the sealing time, and a place Nell liked to visit often, usually alone.

  Nell steered the car carefully past the shearing sheds and the back of the old farmhouse ‘Freshfields’, built by Nat Thomas, a sealer, and his Tasmanian Aboriginal wife, Betty, in 1827, and now owned by the Gill family. Sheets flapped on the hills hoist and a sandy-coloured dog, shaky with age, barked at them half-heartedly as they drove past. Following the edge of another paddock opening out into hills that undulated to the sea and to Lubra Creek on the left, Nell brought the car to a gentle halt on the side of a grassy slope. Nell sat for a moment with the windows down, hushed by the sweeping views of the ocean. Diana couldn’t wait to get out of the car, needing to stand and stretch out her cramping belly, but as soon as she stepped into the thick grass, the blood rushed and she had to hold the towel firm. Nell pretended not to notice and Diana could have thrown a rock at her mother except she was too sad.

  Nell set off briskly down the slope to Lubra Creek, and Diana could do nothing but follow. She remembers it being beautiful despite her bad mood, thick canopies of mallee, gold-green light, a goanna, watchful—like a gatekeeper. Diana settled against a horizontal branch and splashed her face with water from the thermos, watching Nell squat in the dry creek bed running her fingers through the powdery sand. No water here anymore, just sheep skulls and cattle bones, scattered, like petrified wood. Diana already knew the story of Lubra Creek. This was a women’s place, a gathering place for the ‘wives’ of sealers. But there’d been violence here, too—Nell made sure Diana knew about that—the women punished and tied to trees. Flogged. That word made Diana want to throw up, and it was one of the reasons that she didn’t like to go there, thinking of that word. Too many ghosts. Not Nell, though; she thought it a place of power.

  Why are you always sulking, Diana? Nell had said, the air hanging fragile between them. It’s a beautiful day; we could picnic here. Read a book. Did you bring a book? I bet you didn’t even bring a book.

  Diana was incredulous. Why would she have thought to bring a book? She didn’t even know really what they were doing. She kicked at the sand and stalked back towards the car without replying, thinking she would lie on the back seat. Curl up in the fetal position and wait for the surges of menstrual pain to pass. She’d never been able to talk to Nell about those kinds of things, girl things. She just had to struggle along as if it wasn’t happening—like she was in total command and not a bloody disaster, the stuffed-in towel doing absolutely nothing. Diana doesn’t remember, now, how long she waited for Nell in the back of the car, welded with sweat to the vinyl seats, but when Nell returned she was gentler—found a box of tissues in the glove box and got rid of the damned towel. Gave her a sandwich, the crusts drying at the edges, but the honey was sugary and revived her.

  Come on, I want to show you something else. Something you haven’t seen before. Waubs Wall.

  They drove to the opposite side of the property back past the homestead and the pine trees and the low stone wall with the plaque that told of Nat and Betty Thomas, and parked the car at the edge of a gully, before scrabbling their way down to the base of a hill.

  Wait here, while I go and find the opening, Nell said, squeezing Diana’s shoulder.

  Diana watched Nell as she almost crawled through little gaps in the bush trying to find a path inwards, and then back out again shaking her head in consternation. The wind was picking up and Diana clamped her hat down firmly, and danced to keep the ants from crawling into her sandals. Why were they here? She remembers thinking that perhaps it was something to do with Reg being away—perhaps Nell felt they should do something, just girls. Diana hoped it was that, but you never knew with Nell. Something else entirely could have been going on.

  A little spyhole in the hill, Nell announced, once they’d climbed up. It was steep and sheer behind Waubs Wall. No flat ground to rest upon, just panoramic views of Antechamber Bay, and barely a trace of wind behind the dense screen of scrub. The flattish sandstones were placed on top of one another, creating a kind of rudimentary wall, more than ten metres long, though it was collapsing in places, and at least a metre high. But this wasn’t the work of a stonemason, Nell explained, leaning slightly on the wall to catch her breath. Diana wondered how on earth she’d managed to get up here, bashing through bush in Nell’s wake, sliding on the narrow animal tracks and scratching her legs and palms.

  You could have told me to wear proper shoes, Diana said, emptying the dirt from her sandals.

  And she remembers Nell looking hurt then. I’ve never taken anyone here, not even Reg. I’m surprised I remembered how to even find it.

  Well, who was she anyway? Waub?

  Nell eased herself down, finding a scrap of stone to perch on, knees hugged in. No one really knows exactly. She was an Aboriginal woman and she lived here, alone, for many years behind this wall. Built it herself.

  Why alone?

  Well that’s the question. For protection? Ostracised perhaps? Uncle Jim thinks there was tension at times between the mainland women and the Tasmanians. But then those caps, you know the red caps I’ve got, they were a gift from the Van Diemen’s Land women to Uncle’s people. And the necklaces. A show of friendship? I don’t know.

  They ate their apples in silence and, finally being out of the wind, Diana began to feel more settled. The pain in her lower belly was just a dull ache now, and they perched there for at least an hour, watching the ocean shimmer and ripple, Nell writing things in her little notebook and chewing the end of her pencil. Diana thinking, with some shame, that it would be a good place to kiss a boy, and wondering when it would be she would have her first kiss. She liked a boy called Rube, and when she listened to The Hollies, she imagined it was Rube singing those words just for her. How foolish she’d been, though, pinning her hopes and dreams on boys too young to know
what to do with love. Lust, even. She had always given too much away. There was Pearl’s father, too—Paul. She had latched on to him as a way of extricating herself from Nell, she realises now. The first boy to pay her any attention. He was sweet—picked her wilty flowers and wrote her little funny notes. Pearl got her bright blonde hair from him. Every now and again Pearl meets up with him and his wife for lunch. He’s so shy with me, Pearl always says afterwards.

  When Diana and Nell left the hideaway, Diana grabbed a small stone from the wall and put it in her pocket, wanting a souvenir of not just the day, but of Nell’s earlier meanness. Diana was keeping tally. As they stumbled out at the bottom of the gully, she felt guilty and chucked the stone back into the scrub when Nell wasn’t looking, struck suddenly by the superstitious thought of being punished—in an other-worldly sense. As she looked back at the sheer face of the hill, she saw that the opening in the bushes where they’d just emerged, the little gap, was no longer visible; it had simply healed over and disappeared. Places could swallow you up. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to find this spot again.

  On the way home Nell pulled over when she saw a flowering grass tree. Diana watched from the window as Nell stood for what seemed an eternity in front of the tree, finally picking off some of the little cream flowers growing along its spike. By the time they got home the flowers had shrivelled on the dashboard and Nell brushed them unceremoniously out the car door into the dirt, and popped one in her mouth. She thought Nell quite mad then. But after Nell had gone inside, Diana too ate one of the flowers. Sweet and dissolving.

  Diana is surprised at herself for remembering this detail. But this day’s imprinted deep in her body.

  Nanny, finished painting?

  Ariel is crouching on the concrete now, sweeping the sandy floor with the edge of a feather, whispering to herself—acting out the central character in her imaginary game.

  It’s finished now, she says, wringing her hands. The sudden ache in the guts, chest, womb, bowels, jaw, ears: grief.

  I’m hungry.

  Why don’t you go back to the house, then, and I’ll just finish off here?

  No, Nanny, I want to stay with you. And don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone you finished Nell’s painting.

  Let’s get you some breakfast, little nymph; I’ll clean up later. All Diana can think is that she needs to flee the shed. Spooked all of a sudden. As if Nell was watching her on high. Disapprovingly.

  Nanny, you’re hugging me too tight.

  And as they stumble out into the glare of morning—the salty clean bracing wind of it—Diana knows her decision has been made.

  It could be that I’m going crazy, of course. It would not surprise me at all. Just me and my ghosts and my silly desperate thoughts knocking around here now. Sometimes I have the urge to flee from this undoing because the house seems so full, so bristling, so listening. So lonely. I put down my pen and stand quickly so the chair crashes backwards satisfyingly. Briefly, I am naked in the middle of the lounge room floor while I think where my bathers have got to. Reg is there, reminding me to take a hat and cover my shoulders. I laugh at how shocking I must look to Reg now. He saw me neither very young nor very old. I only had a few strands of silver in my hair then and I was proud of them like I’d earnt them. I plucked them out and lined them up on the dresser. Between my breasts was a vertical line like a faint fold and Reg loved rippling his fingers across it. My thighs were strong then and my belly was curved and pliant. My buttocks more of a handful than Reg could manage. I rummage through the pile of clean washing on the couch and Reg wraps his arms around me and he carries me across the threshold and down the winding path of the dune. My hair whips up in his face and he stumbles, but I am light in his arms, so he finds his feet. My nipples prick in the damp air; Reg’s rough thumbs are joists in my back. And then I’m kneeling on the sand and he is gone. Vanished. My kneecaps shrink from the jolt of the fall. A pool of water glints in the sun and calls me over and I hear Reg singing ‘You Are My Sunshine’ in the distance. This was our driving in the car together song. When I stand the sun is a beautiful sealskin around my shoulders. Its colours are mottled, speckled almost, and run from chocolate to grey to something luminous and pewter. Sealskins can forecast the weather, or so I’ve been told—when the hair rises up, a storm is coming; when the hair lies silky smooth and soft, the day will be fair. A storm is coming. There is blood on my lip and the salt of it the salt of it the salt of it. Is pleasure. I lower myself into the rockpool and the cold of it seems to clamp all the loose muscle of my limbs to the bone. It sharpens me. Underwater, my skin is blanched young and taut and the paint under my nails flakes away. I float on my back but my legs will not stay up. I keep righting myself vertically like those Japanese papier-mâché dolls that won’t fall over. Diana comes to me, but she is a little girl and she is crying. Has she always been searching for her brother in the rocks and the caves? Seal Brother. Did she always know? Or did I forget to tell her? I couldn’t find him either—he didn’t want to know me. There was a veto against me making contact. And yet, the memory of Sol is lessening. It’s just a wisp and a brightening. I close my eyes and the smell of salt cleans my throat and empties the skull.

  My dove in the clefts of the rock,

  in the shadow of the cliff,

  let me see you, all of you!

  Let me hear your voice,

  your delicious song.

  I love to look at you.

  And then Pearl comes to me, her whole body spread across the sky like pregnant rain. She just keeps swelling and swelling, so that I can’t tell my size anymore. I could be a pomegranate seed. A spear of samphire. Or I am an entire bedrock. Once I took Pearl to Red Cliffs with Marian and Red. She was ten. We slathered ourselves in the mud that oozed by the water’s edge and when it dried our skin pulled tight and we laughed because we were terracotta pots and it would not wash off. If I could make Pearl rain now I would I would. Wash everything clean. Please don’t make her wait heavy any longer. She’ll grow strange, like me. If I could weep for all lost children I would. So I weep for my own and my tonsils ache. My cheeks ache. I grow a covering like I’m being zippered up—sleek and fine—and suddenly I’m no longer cold. I am perfect. When the next wave sucks back toward the ocean, I glide over the lip of the pool, grazing my belly, juddering at the bladderwrack with my fin, and swim deep down to the bottom, holding my breath. This is where I must go. Beyond words.

  February, 1829

  near Middle River

  Maringani slices the glass scraper along the last of the flesh, cutting the fat and sinew away from the kangaroo skin in quick, jagged motions. Emue’s scraper—cool and heavy and smooth. She remembers it in the curve of Emue’s hand, and smiles at how neatly it fits her own. Once Maringani has scraped all the flesh from the skin, she turns the tool on its side to use the sharp edge; she cuts two long pieces from the pelts and places them side by side in the sand with the fur facing up. Weellum, kneeling opposite Maringani, holds out a whale ear bone filled with water. She glances up at him and he is looking straight at her, and she notices for the first time that he has a tiny scar by his right eye. She lowers her eyes and flicks sand from the edges of the damp fur. She has missed him. So many moons he has been away. And she won’t ask him about Emue, she already knows. Weellum places the curled-up bone with water, in front of Maringani, his thumb accidentally brushing past her breast. His hands rest on the sides of the vessel, and she thinks the container frilly like coral or flowers. William’s hands are brown, with wide palms and strong, thick nails. She remembers the dry warmth of them as they skimmed past her, imagines his calluses running along her belly skin. The air thickens like honey. Weellum takes her right hand in both of his and gently unfurls Maringani’s fingers from the scraper. She allows him to take the tool from her and place it in the sand. Weellum lowers her hand into the water. She doesn’t look at him. Rubbing his thumbs along the inside of her palms and along the lengths of each finger, he washes the sticky
kangaroo fat from her. Delicately, he lifts her right hand from the bowl and places it onto her thigh; Maringani watches him looking at the water that runs in rivulets down behind her knee. He takes her other hand, entwines his around hers, and then begins to wash it carefully. Maringani whisks it away, wiping it dry on her shirt. She looks along the curve of the bay to see Minnie crouching in the shallows.

  Come. Stand, she says quietly to Weellum.

  Traces of dried salt crust around William’s calves and ankles—pearly against the red-brown of his skin. She turns on her knees from him and gathers her tools from her sister basket.

  William gets up and places one foot and then the other onto the pelts. They feel soft and smooth against the soles of his feet. Maringani pulls the skin up and moulds it around each foot, pressing the edges together firmly. Taking a thin piece of bone sharpened into a point on one end, Maringani sews the shoes together with finely rolled sinew. William looks down at the crown of her head, at her black hair hanging in waves stiff with salt. He stands very still as she sews, feeling the tug as the bone needle is pulled firmly through the kangaroo skin. He feels the tug in his groin. When Maringani has sewn both shoes she presses her hands deliberately into the skin, moulding it, so that it will dry perfectly in the shape of his feet.

  Thank yer, William flexes his toes inside the shoes, feeling the coarseness of the kangaroo fur, but also the warmth and protection it gives his feet, raw with cuts and salt from walking on the pointed rocks at the edges of the bay.

  Maringani has already moved away to the water’s edge. William watches her and wonders whether there is a swelling of her belly that he hasn’t noticed before. His cheeks burn at the thought of this. Women are like trees, he thinks. Growing essential fruit. But how will he know what to do? He never wants to hear her scream, like Emue, when Anderson makes her lie with him. He eases back in the sand and remembers the pressure of her fingers against his feet; imagines the temperature of her skin, tight and smooth across her perfectly round belly.