Lessons from the Heart (15 page)

On the Rock, the climbers still look like ants, two steady streams passing one another now. I watch them for a while. There's someone halfway down who's wearing a bright pink top like Toni's. Which brings me back. To Luisa.

Who's nowhere in sight.

‘Luisa?'

It can't be that long since I saw her.

‘Lui-sa!'

There are people everywhere, sauntering this way and that on the path. She couldn't have gone far. Where could she go to, out here?

‘Have you seen a little girl?' I ask a man in a brown cotton jacket, who looks like a guide or a ranger. ‘She's dark,' I say, ‘an Indian. She was here with me. A little while ago.'

‘In a blue tracksuit?' he says. ‘With a school badge?'

‘Where is she?'

‘It's okay, slow down,' he says, as calmly as anything. When I'm the one who's responsible. ‘She's back there, off the path a bit,' he says. ‘I wondered when I saw her. She's with you?'

‘Yes.' I'm already running in the direction he's pointing. ‘I'm supposed to be in charge of her.'

‘It's okay,' he shouts again. ‘It's too hot to run. She's being looked after.'

Looked after?

‘Luisa! Luisa, where are you?'

‘I'm here,' a voice says. In the bushes by the second cave, Luisa's standing with her arms stretched out before her. She's loaded with what look like sticks and clumps of dead brush, but there are flowers – blue and bright purple – among them. The woman beside her is barefoot, her skirt threadbare, though she wears a heavy ski jacket and a coloured beanie on her head –
still
, in this heat. She has flies at the corners of her eyes, but makes no attempt to brush them away. ‘I'm helping,' Luisa says.

‘I thought I told you …' I start to yell at her. Then control myself. ‘I thought I said not to go away.'

‘You were doing your stupid poem.'

The woman says something to her, takes the pile of brush and flowers from her, touches her on the shoulder.

‘You're not allowed in there,' I tell her.

‘She said I could,' Luisa says back, looking up at the woman. And they're both coming towards me now, the woman – whose legs are thin as stilts, though her hips and body seem heavy, swollen, in the thick blue jacket – stepping neatly between the circles of spinifex. Without looking. At one point she bends and lays down the bundle she's taken from Luisa.

‘She helpin me all right, this one,' the woman says, smiling, as she brings Luisa over to the fence. ‘She your sister?' she asks. And I'm not sure if she's talking to me or Luisa.

‘No,' I say. ‘I'm supposed to be looking after her. All the others climbed the Rock, and we stayed down here.'

The woman goes on looking at me.

‘You not Koori,' she says.

‘No,' I laugh, in shock. Me –
Koori?
I think to myself. Is she blind? But then I realize she isn't asking me, she's just stating it. ‘I'm sorry about Luisa,' I say. ‘I hope she didn't bother you. I'll take her back now.'

‘Nala's preparing for a ceremony,' Luisa says. ‘Aren't you, Nala? I was helping her with the sticks for the fire – and there are seeds and all this fruit – you never know it's fruit if you just see it.'

‘That's fine,' I tell her. ‘But you shouldn't be in there.'

‘It's tonight, in one of the caves, and it's only the women, and they'll have singing and there'll be a fire, won't there, Nala?'

The woman just smiles and nods. She smiles whenever she looks at Luisa, but she frowns at me, and I wonder if it's because I let Luisa wander around, when they're probably so careful with their own children, especially when people keep stealing them. She's looking at me now and twisting a piece of white string or cord through her fingers. I'm thinking about this, about the whiteness of the cord against the brown of her hand, but then I find she's speaking to me directly. At last.

‘What one you bilong?'

‘How do you mean?'

‘All this pepil …' She gestures with her head at a group of tourists going past. They're Italians, I think, by their accents, though there are some Germans as well.

‘What country you bilong?' the woman says.

‘My father's Greek,' I tell her. ‘He lives there, in Greece.'

‘Oh.'

‘But I'm an Australian.'

‘You bilong this country?'

‘I suppose. I've never thought.'

‘I bilong this country,' she says. And her gesture, with her hand circling lazily, then falling by her side, could mean anything. ‘Much better you bilong one country.'

‘I suppose.'

‘Everyone happier that way.' She looks at the ground. She stands in a funny way, one hip pushed out in one direction, and her legs and the top of her body pointing forty-five degrees in the other so that you wonder she doesn't topple over. I feel like balancing something, a box or something, on her hip, just to keep her upright. And then I wonder if she's just recently been carrying something, or someone. I look round for a child, but there's only Luisa.

‘So you live here?' I say to the woman, stupidly. For something to say. ‘At the Resort?' Knowing there's nothing else on the maps out here.

‘Not Resort,' she laughs. ‘This one better camp.' She points with her lips.

I look behind me. And this time it's me that nearly topples over. ‘God. What's
that
?'

Cos plumb in the middle of the horizon behind me there's a mountain range that I swear wasn't there a moment before, or not a mountain range so much as these giant melons or pumpkins or gourds or something. Which are mauve, and alive, and which move, even as I look at them. The air out away from the Rock is shimmering now, and I have to shield my eyes to look properly.

‘What
is
it?' I ask again.

‘That one Kata Tjuta,' the woman says.

‘Isn't it beautiful?' is all I can say for a moment. And then when I've recovered. ‘You don't mean you live there?'

‘No,' the woman laughs. ‘
That
one.' She points again.

And then, on the other side of the road, through the trees I see a cluster of low roofs, and hear a mad barking of dogs, and wonder how I could have failed to see that, either, till now.

‘I wish we could come,' Luisa says. ‘To the ceremony. But Nala says we can't.'

‘You too liddle,' the woman says. ‘When you grown a bit. Then you come.'

‘What about Laura, then? She's not too young.'

‘Not Koori that one,' the woman laughs. ‘If she Koori – even if she not Anangu – then she can come.'

Which makes no sense at all.

‘But you can come,' the woman says. ‘Nex year maybe. Cos you Koori one all right.'

And I look at Luisa. But she doesn't appear at all embarrassed or shocked by the woman's mistake. She just says: ‘What's the string for, Nala?'

‘That one?' the woman says, holding up the wrist to which the cord is attached. One end of it is knotted and the knot lies firmly under two loops of the cord. As we watch, she takes the loose end of the string and strains it, until the material bites into her skin. The knotted end, though not tied, doesn't move. ‘That one for ceremony,' she says.

‘Yes, but what's it for?' Luisa persists. ‘To tie the sticks?'

‘No,' the woman shakes her head and smiles. ‘That secret one.'

‘But, Nala, it must be for something.'

‘Can't tell. That secret one, like all this one here.' And as she says this, she turns and it's like she's speaking to the Rock itself, to the cave behind her, the hollows, the water. ‘That one tie you to the Earth,' she says, and because of the way she keeps saying
this one
and
that one
and never points directly, I have no idea whether she's talking about the Rock, or the caves behind her, or the water and the trees, or even the white string, or what.

‘That way,' she says to me, ‘you know which country you bilong.'

‘Oh, I see.' When I don't, really. Or only sort of.

‘We've got to go now,' I tell her then. ‘Our friends are coming back soon, they'll wonder where we are.'

‘They're up there,' Luisa says. ‘See, Nala, they're climbing on the Rock.'

Once again I get it all wrong. I expect the woman, Nala, to be upset by this, people climbing all over the Rock.

‘
Minga
.' She laughs, and can see the climbers apparently without even shielding her eyes.

‘What's
Minga?'
Luisa asks.

‘Minga
that liddle one.' She points not to the Rock but at a spot on the ground with her bare toe.

‘Ants?' Luisa says. ‘You mean ants?'

Nala looks at me. ‘You got cig'rette?'

‘No, I'm sorry. I don't smoke.'

‘You shouldn't smoke,' Luisa says, and – even with her – I'm suddenly unclear whether she's talking to me or the woman and expressing concern for our health, or is just laying down the law generally. ‘It gives you cancer.'

‘Maybe I not give her back,' the woman says, putting a restraining hand on Luisa's shoulder. ‘Maybe I keep that one and you gotta buyim back.' She smiles. And I smile back. I've played this game many times before, with Maria, one of Mum's students from Chile. Maria was in jail and tortured under Pinochet. Her daughter's still back in Chile. Whenever Maria comes to the house and I'm there, she grabs me by the arm and won't let go. ‘I'm taking this one with me,' she always says to Mum. ‘This is my daughter. This one belongs to me.' Sometimes she hangs on and hangs on for ages, long after you'd think the joke was over. ‘Good,' Mum always responds, ‘you can take her now.' ‘I mean it,' Maria says. ‘I take her with me.' But Mum only laughs, just like this woman Nala does now, when I say:

‘I've only got five dollars.'

‘Pive dollars?' She pretends to be shocked. ‘That all? That won't even buy six-pack.'

She lets Luisa go then, and Luisa climbs back, reluctantly, through the strands of wire.

‘Have a nice ceremony, Nala,' she says, and waves. The woman looks after her for a moment, then waves back. The white cord is still wrapped around her wrist and fingers. She turns and bends to pick up the bundle of sticks and flowers. She looks suddenly huge from behind, bent like that.

‘She seems very nice,' I say, peering at Luisa out of the corner of my eye. I have no sense of what Luisa's thinking. The down on her dark cheek is golden as we come out of the trees.

‘They might be back by now,' she says, having apparently forgotten the woman already. ‘I'm dying to see Sarah.'

And so in the end it's me who's left. Dying to know.

‘Where are you from, Luisa?'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Your family. Like, my father's from Greece. And I lived there for a while before we came back to Sydney.'

‘Well, before,' she takes my hand, ‘we lived in Moree.'

‘Mor-
ee
? But before that?'

‘I don't remember before that, but Mum says Dad came from somewhere else.'

‘But you don't know where?'

‘Lismore, I think.'

‘Oh,' I say, and leave it. You can't just keep repeating,
And before that? And before that?
because it could be only her grandparents are from India, or Sri Lanka, or wherever they come from, and not her parents at all. They could even be born here.

‘Look,' she cries then, and releases my hand. ‘There's Sarah. Sarah,' she calls, ‘Sar-ah!'

And runs towards her friend, leaving me trailing behind her.

* *

‘What about these various activities?' Mr Jackson had said to me at one point during the inquiry. ‘Climbing the Rock, walking in the Olgas …'

‘Kata Tjuta,' I told him. ‘The Olgas' real name is Kata Tjuta.'

‘These activities,' Mr Jackson ignored me. ‘Were the two of them always together then?'

‘I can't remember, Mr Jackson. Once you get back home, everything gradually gets mixed up in your mind.'

‘Just focus on one thing at a time, then, Laura,' Mr Murchison said. ‘That first morning everyone climbed the Rock. Were they together then?'

‘No. No, they weren't. I remember now. Toni was with Mrs Harvey. Mrs Harvey said Toni was to stay with her –'

All right, all right,' Mr Jackson said. ‘Don't get excited.'

‘But it's true. Mrs Harvey kept Toni at the back to help her look after the smallest girls while they went up. And Mr Prescott was right at the other end of the line – at the front, I mean, with the biggest boys. So the whole group was between them.'

‘This was going up?' Mr Murchison said. He wasn't looking at me, he was doodling on the pad in front of him. It was weird, he'd drawn these three large circles on his pad and he was slowly filling them in by pressing the nib of his pen onto the page, and then lifting it sharply off. Leaving all these black dots, like a desert painting. ‘What about when you got to the top?'

‘I don't know,' I said, and I couldn't tell either if I was blushing.

‘You mean you didn't see Toni up there?'

‘I mean, I didn't go. I didn't climb with the others.'

‘Whyever not?' Mr Jackson said.

‘One of the Year 7s didn't want to go, and she couldn't be left by herself, and Mrs Harvey didn't want to waste one of the teachers with her.'

‘So you stayed at the bottom with her,' Mr Murchison said, and he'd stopped pressing with his pen and making dots for the moment and was looking at me with his watery blue eyes. He didn't blink once, though, just looked, and I found it impossible to guess what he was thinking.