Of Ashes and Rivers that Run to the Sea (14 page)

I don't know if anyone else is thinking what I'm thinking but if my eyes aren't deceiving me mummy is flirting with S, my kinship father and her
ngenimini
, or brother-in-law. And it's right in front of me and everyone else. The woman obviously has no shame. I'd noticed them getting cosy at the club a few nights ago and although I'd blamed it then on the inexplicable power of alcohol to make even the ugliest person highly desirable, I know my instincts can't be wrong. I scan the faces around me but they don't seem to have detected the unmistakeable atmosphere between them and go on with what they are doing. Beside mummy Lorraine picks a nit from Queenie's hair, examines it, crushes it between her nails, flicks the offending blood-sucker away and scrummages around for more. Next to me Vianne is doodling in the sand with a stick while John
Viarney destroys the doodles with his foot. Their mum, my kinship sister Lorraine, is snoozing behind Lorraine my sister, while next to her Aunty Marie Evelyn is telling me the story of when her second-eldest Mark drove her new four-wheel-drive onto the beach and got it bogged and by the time he had arrived back with help the tide was over the bonnet.

‘An I was gonna kill im with big stick,' she says waving her arms around in the air like she has an enormous tree trunk in her hands, and shaking her head at the memory. ‘But im too fast, n im run away.'

I make conciliatory noises and watch mummy out the corner of my eye over my pannikin. She is handing him a cigarette she's just rolled. She never does that for anyone. I adjust aunty's voice down to a background hum as I notice mummy's lips moving and tune in to her conversation with lover boy.

‘Oo, you debil,' she says coquettishly, batting her eyelids. I wonder what he said or did to bring on a response like that. She gammon moves her body slightly away and sits in profile to him as he grins and then stands up. Dusting the sand off his arse he saunters off to where my brothers are dragging a net through the creek at Tarntippi, two on one side of the net and two on the other. He joins another two who are keeping an eye out for crocs sneaking up from the mangrove side. I watch mummy watching him lost in thought for a few seconds and then she turns back to aunty and me.

‘An you aunty was crying big mob,' she chuckles like she's been involved in the conversation the whole time and not carrying on with his lordship, and while aunty morosely nods her head in affirmation. My mum does this all the time. I can't work out how she can keep track of a number of different conversations and things going on at the same time but she does. She giggles a bit more. I don't join in because firstly it's a terrible story about aunty's car and secondly I am quite disturbed about my mother acting in such a familiar manner with S. Mummy gets up and heads off over the sand dunes for a piss and I watch her as she walks away tucking a stray piece of windblown hair behind her ear. I wonder whether he's whispered sweet nothings into that ear of hers or if at their age they don't beat around the bush with crap like that, they just get stuck right into it. I wonder where those hands of hers have been, come to think of it. An image flickers through my mind of the pair of them fucking and I flinch. Parents aren't allowed to do things like that, it's obscene. They are there to care for you and teach you how to survive in the world and to spoil grandkids, they don't have animal urges.

Lorraine gets up and heads to the sea, I'm assuming to wash her hands after her rendezvous with the lice, and I go with her because as she's my sister I'm busting to tell her about what I think is going on with mummy. We sit in the shallows. The sea water is warm like a bath. This is the time that the stingers come out of the creeks where they
have been breeding, like the creek where my brothers are now with their drag net. I turn to speak to my sister and notice a little cloud of yellow water gathering around her crotch and realise she's having a piss.

‘Where's your manners, why don't you go in the bush?' I say, grateful that the dissipating yellow cloud is being carried away with the waves and not towards me, but Lorraine just chortles like a magpie. She is crazy and doesn't give a shit about anything. But as someone who is never lost for words I am having a bit of trouble getting my snippet of gossip out, the words are sticking together like toffee. I sit there for a second or two longer and then just blurt it out. Lorraine looks at me and then back at mummy on the beach and then to me again. ‘You reckon?' she says.

I launch into a detailed description of what I've observed while Lorraine listens intently, nodding sagely.

‘Well, shall we ask her?' I say and Lorraine rolls her eyes.

‘If you want mummy walking stick on
la boonta
[head] den go on,' she says, all serious-like. I ponder this and come to the conclusion that for once Lorraine is right. Discussing mummy's indiscretions with her would be tantamount to suicide. I watch Lorraine head back to the others on the beach in the shade of the casuarina tree. The sea is like a ripply pane of frosted glass and way out in the distance I see the dark shape of a crocodile steaming along parallel to the beach. The other blokes including S are watching it
too, but it's not interested in humans today, it's got other things to do.

I think hard about mummy and somewhere in the jumble in my mind I realise that mixed up in all my bad feelings for her is jealousy. I am so jealous because it looks like she has made a space in her heart for someone else and that means that the space she has for me is smaller now. I watch the waves washing over my legs. If there were any stingers around they'd drape their transparent poisonous tentacles across my legs before I'd have the chance to say the ‘fu' out of ‘fucking shit there's a stinger!' I wonder if it would hurt as much as the pain that's gnawing away at my insides because of my traitorous mother.

Later I can see that mummy is getting sick of my chattering. On the way home I made sure I sat next to her in the back of the ute so he couldn't and now I'm following her around everywhere so she can't sneak off and get up to mischief with him. Too polite to tell me to bugger off she plonks her arse down on the front veranda with a big sigh and pulls out her pack of cards. Mummy can sit and play patience for hours and I get really bored watching her but today I'm determined to sit it out.

Then I see Lorraine over the road at Bruce's place. She's all of fifteen but I know without a doubt she's been rooting this Bruce and so does mummy. Mummy yells out to her to get her arse home but Lorraine isn't moving fast enough for mummy's liking so mummy is on her feet in
an instant. For someone with a gammy leg she can move fast when she wants to. She marches over the road with me close on her heels. I note the grip she has on her walking stick as Lorraine gets to her feet and saunters towards us. Lorraine's face has a nonchalant air about it but her eyes are wary like a deer about to take flight. Before I can say ‘Lorraine, look out' mummy has cracked her a beauty right across her left shoulder. Mummy's skill with that walking stick is legendary and she strikes with the speed of a black mamba. Mummy's skinny black arm is a blur as she strikes a second and then a third time. Lorraine is on the ground by now, screeching something in Tiwi, but by the time my brain has translated the Tiwi into English so I can understand what my sister is saying mummy has turned on me. ‘What this rubbish you talking for me and S?' she growls menacingly. I glare at Lorraine and then she is on her feet and bolting for home smirking while mummy's walking stick whistles past my ear. I turn to bolt too as the rubber knob at the end makes contact with the middle of my back, nearly knocking me to the ground.

When I get home Lorraine has locked herself in the toilet so I can't pay her back for blabbing to mummy, but that doesn't stop me. I grab Queenie's bike from next door, prop it up by the toilet window, climb on it and then scramble through. I've got Lorraine by the throat and am trying to choke her when Louis climbs in the window too and grabs my hands and makes me let go. Meanwhile mummy is
banging on the door with her walking stick and raising merry hell. I hear Mario asking mummy what's going on and then a yelp of pain as mummy turns on him too.

‘Marie say mummy fucking S,' yells Lorraine, trying to be heard above the din outside the door while I vehemently deny the allegations. This only serves to make mummy's banging even more frenzied. I've had enough of this and I climb on the loo and then out the window while Lorraine and Louis follow. We take off across the back way to our cousin brother Cajutan's place where we spend the rest of the afternoon until mummy cools down.

Louis' band the Tiwi Wailers is playing at the club tonight. I've heard some of the local talent playing on front verandas and on the local Black radio and it has been excruciating so I'm interested to see if Louis is as bad as the rest of them. Louis is a real cool cat with his dark sunglasses and he looks professional too as he strums a few chords on his guitar and then fiddles with the nobbly things on the neck to tune it. Apart from Louis there is another guitarist, a bass guitarist and a drummer, and that's the band. Mummy and I have been here since four o'clock and we've had a few beers by now. The boys on the stage are drinking too, apparently they get better the drunker they get, or maybe they sound better the drunker we get.

After a bit of stuffing around they open with ‘Buffalo Soldier' and are surprisingly good. I expected nasally
out-of-tune singing but Louis has a great voice and they've got quite a nice thing happening. Some people get up to dance in the open space down the front. The surly cow from the store is really getting in the groove and swaying around, sluttishly shaking her boobs. Mummy tells me that this woman always does this and she has the hots for the drummer even though they are both married to other people. I ask mummy if their respective husband and wife are in the audience and she says yes and points them out to me. I watch them all with interest because I love scandals.

A frail-looking old man comes over and introduces himself. He lives on Melville Island but is over on Bathurst Island visiting family. He tells me he used to know me when I was a little kid at the Garden Point Mission. He is sweet and gentle and he shakes my hand and leaves. But mummy is bristling with rage. ‘Im ol man got no right to talk to you like that,' she hisses. This surprises me and I ask mummy why. ‘Cos im rubbish one, that's why!' she spits. I watch the old fella talking to some other people nearby. I'm thankful that mummy didn't have a go at him with her walking stick because she would have broken him in half if she had, he's so skinny. He meanders over to the dance floor and my heart leaps to my throat as the surly cow bumps and grinds right next to him. Terrified he is going to get knocked over and trampled by surly cow and a number of other women bopping around him I look
helplessly at mummy, only to see her glaring at him with a face of thunder.

‘Mummy, he might get hurt,' I say. ‘Look at them jumping around him like idiots.'

‘Well, that him problem not mine,' she snarls.

What happens next is astounding. My beer glass is halfway to my mouth when the old fart erupts onto the dance floor like someone has stuffed a firecracker up his arse. His legs are going this way and that in fast motion and his beer is slopping everywhere but he is having a whale of a time. Someone hands him another beer, he drains half in one gulp while negotiating a tricky spin and jerking the other arm around in the air to the beat. This is amazing and, beer forgotten, I am mesmerised. I give him a loud whistle and when he turns I wave at him. He gives me a wink and goes on dancing while mummy whacks my leg with her stick.

‘Don't encourage im,' she says grumpily. ‘Im jus show-off,' which makes me laugh. The song ends and he has a bit of a breather and the rest of what's left of his beer. The music cranks up and he's off again like a whirling dervish, the empty plastic beer glass spins off into the crowd and he leaps and cavorts around until another one appears in his hand. Mummy sends me inside for more beer but when I get back there is mayhem. The band has stopped playing and there is lots of gabbling and pointing to the dance floor. I rush down to see what's going on, expecting to
see the old fella spreadeagled on the floor from a heart attack brought on by his exertions. But he's alright, he's sitting on the ground knocking back another beer while my cousin-brother Valerian, a health worker, examines his leg. I ask Valerian what happened and he tells me the surly cow was waving her arms around and knocked the poor old bugger right off his feet and he thinks his leg is broken. I relay this to mummy as the old bloke is carried past, still drinking his beer.

‘Serve im right,' says mummy with a triumphant sneer as she watches them carting him out the gate. After the old man has gone the band starts up again and the dancers dance around like nothing has happened. Surly cow is back in the thick of it, a bit wobblier on her feet but still bouncing her elastic boobs around with great gusto and making eyes at the drummer. Later when we're all home I ask Louis what happened because he would have had a bird's eye view from up on the stage. He gives me a blow-by-blow account. I then tell Louis about how the old bloke had spoken to me and mummy's reaction towards him. ‘Well, im ol man got no right to talk to you like that cos im rubbish one,' says Louis just like mummy had. He explains that there are some people we can talk to and some we can't and that old man was one we have to avoid because of the kinship structure.

‘An dere are mob we can't look at,' says mummy, ‘cos dey eben more rubbish one.'

‘But how do I know if it's someone I can't look at, if I don't look at them first to find out?' I ask. This is getting confusing.

‘You don't use em eye,' she says wearily like she's explaining something to an idiot. ‘You usem dis one.' She pounds on her chest like she's trying to dislodge something.

‘Oh, I see,' I say. ‘I have to use my intuition.'

‘Nah!' she says with a nasty glare in her eye and thwacking her chest with such force that I think she's going to knock herself over. ‘Not im chooishin! Im dis one!'