Of Ashes and Rivers that Run to the Sea (18 page)

Nanna told me about mummy's promised husband whom mummy had refused, Charlie Brian, who lived at Bulungadhuru, one of our family outstations. I was to meet this lovely old man many times and always wondered why my mum turned him down. Maybe because she would have had to share him with my Aunty Michelle and her sister.

Although I was starting to wonder when she was ever going to get around to it, Nanna reassured me that she hadn't forgotten why I was there. She was still pleased to impart her wisdom about my beginnings but not before she was ready and not before she'd told me everything else she thought I should know as well.

‘You know that baby for that no-good cousin-sister of yours, well im daddy is brother-boy for you aunties first son to that wrong husband one. Dat mother one proper no good cheeky blackfella.'

or

‘You know dem fat desert womans oo come ere and steal our blokes? Well dem only good for wind break! Nussing else!'

and

‘I told im nephew my boy, don't go dat way and waddya know, im silly bugger goes dat way an gets stuck in that creek rite up his arse. Stuck tight im was in dat mud, rite up his arse.'

Impatient as I was, I held my tongue. I was beginning to understand that there's no interrupting Nanna when she gets going. And so a week later with my head full of scandal, skulduggery and Nanna's escapades, I finally learnt about my birth. I was surprised to learn that I was born under a tree on the banks of the Mainoru River. Many generations of my family had been born at that place on the river but sadly I was one of the last because Native Affairs didn't think it was proper to have babies in the scrub anymore like we'd been doing for ever and ever. There was a three-quarter moon and a late wet-season storm crashing around the sky. I was in a hurry to arrive and Nanna said that was a blessing because no one wanted to be struck by lightning while I dilly-dallied. Nanna
Nellie and Nanna Clara, her cousin-sister, delivered me. They used a freshwater mussel to cut my cord and tied it with a native vine. But not everyone was happy when I arrived to thunderous applause from the heavens. ‘Too white,' my Nanna Clara said as they checked me out by the camp-fire light, and everyone knew what that meant. Back in those days any coloured babies in my family were given to the crocs because dealing with these things right away saved a lot of suffering later on. It was better that we die in our own piece of country than be taken by the authorities and lost to our families forever.

But maybe in those first few seconds of life I sensed that something was in the balance because Nanna Nellie said I didn't make a sound. My eyes were open and I was looking right at her, like I was waiting. She stared at me real hard, looking for a sign so she could give my little spirit to that river. But there was nothing. We'll keep this one, she said, she's special.

Nanna Nellie knew right then that I was a
Yawk Yawk
, a mermaid, and I would always come back to that river, that I was meant to stay and face whatever life was going to give me, even if I did end up down south living with whitefellas. After that she cleaned me with the ashes of the black wattle. This was to make sure that the energy of that place would go into my body and I would always be tied to where I was born.

When Nanna finished telling me about how I was born I understood that only she could have told me this, not my mum, not anyone, only her. And whether I lived or died, whatever decision she made would have been the right one.

I didn't realise how much of my mum's space filled my life, and still does, until she died in early December 2000 – isn't that always the way. But we'd had twelve years together and during those twelve years I think we more than made up for what I had lost as a little kid taken away. And after she left me I missed her silences and her prickly little packages of sarcasm crammed with secret compartments that even now open up when I least expect them to, giving me a glimpse of my mum in other places and times.

When she was alive her thoughts would travel from her eyes to mine straight as an arrow and they would speak to me more clearly than any words. I absorbed her thoughts through my skin and breathed them into my lungs like air, they hung in the sky like stars, I could smell them, I could
see them. And when she died she gave me her thoughts, like she said she would, a final parting gift. And every now and then when I realise I'm seeing something through my mum's eyes I thank her because she had a lot more common sense than I was ever born with.

It was only after mummy was gone that I realised she knew she was dying long before we did. But my mum was like that, she wouldn't have wanted the pall of death to be floating around us while she was in the space of the living. This was her secret, it belonged to her and while no one else knew about it she could deal with it all in her own way and time. And what a beautiful thing, to keep those moments to yourself and to look at the world through eyes that have seen everything you are ever going to see and to be content with that. No yearnings to travel to the moon or see the
Mona Lisa
before it's too late, nothing like that. Just to walk on this earth and know that you have been blessed with a life, to have an acceptance of what has been before and what's to come. She was pretty amazing.

And when it finally became obvious to us that she wasn't well and we all started freaking out about the cancer in her throat and her bones, that was when she started to pull away from us and retreat into her own little place of peace inside her. She didn't want us carrying on and pilfering bits of her soul to turn into memories so we could keep some of her for ourselves, because we were stealing
her energy and she needed it for herself. And her dying didn't belong to her anymore, we'd taken ownership of it and were twisting it this way and that and trying to make it listen to us. And when that didn't work, we laid siege with emotional blackmail, we loaded up the trebuchet and bombarded her with our pleas.

‘You can't leave us, what are we going to do without you, you won't see the grandkids grow up.' We went on and on.

And then one day when the cancer had eaten through the side of her face, right where I used to kiss her when I was coming home or going off somewhere (or sometimes just for the hell of it) she told me a story. It was about when her mother-in-law was sick and old and she wanted to go to Yuwalinga out at Tangiyaw and just sit. So off they went, mummy, Amah, Daddy Casmir and the boys, and they camped at our favourite spot on the beach under the beauty leaf tree. From here you can see the sun set over the ocean, and the reefs just off the shore where the painted crays live, and the ochre cliffs in the distance that flare up into unimaginable colours when the sun's rays hit them. Mummy made a fire and boiled the billy and after his cuppa daddy went off with the boys to do some fishing while mummy and Amah sat just like my amah wanted and they watched the world go by. Then my amah asked mummy if she could get her some water from the spring nearby. So off mummy
went to where Jeremuru the white-breasted sea eagle sat on his tree guarding the spring and dug the sand away a bit where it had fallen in since the last visit and got a billy can of the water. Filtered through rock and sand this water is so sweet, so mummy had a nice big drink and had a bit of a chat to Jeremuru and then headed back to Amah.

But she'd taken no more than a dozen steps when she heard a curlew calling out from the bush. She just threw that billy can and ran and sure enough the curlew was right because when mummy got back Amah was peacefully lying down facing the ocean and already on her journey to the other side. At first mummy was upset because she'd been dawdling and hadn't been there with Amah when Amah had decided it was time to go but then she realised that Amah had done it on purpose. She had sent her off because she wanted to spend her last moments on this earth by herself and not surrounded by people wailing and crying and trying to drag her back.

Amah was buried right there at the place that she loved.

After my mum told me this I pulled myself together. Mummy didn't need to see me blubbering like a big baby because there'd be enough time for that later on. She didn't need to see my eyes filled with fear and pity and sadness and all those selfish things you feel when someone you love is being taken away from you and you are helpless to do anything about it. So I stopped resisting and accepted
that my mum was on a journey that she had to take alone and she would leave when she was good and ready. I had no right to hold her back, I had to let her go. And it was like a great big weight had been lifted off me and I could focus on her living instead of her dying.

My brothers still carried on but mummy had me to smooth the path for her now so she didn't trip over obstacles put there by caring but unthinking people who were clinging to her like an oyster to a rock and slowing her down.

And then a few weeks later I felt a presence in the room and it wasn't like those ones that are passing through or just want to hang around for a bit and say hello. This one felt very familiar and when I asked mummy if she knew who it was she said it was Daddy Casmir, her darling husband was waiting for her. I knew then that she didn't have long to go.

I can't speak for my brothers but the last week of my mother's life was an amazing time of love and learning. When I asked her what her favourite memories were, she said she'd let her memories go because they were too heavy to carry around. She didn't need them and she'd let them blow away. When I asked her if she had any regrets she said there were no words in any of our family languages for regret. To regret something was a waste of time so why make a word for something that you didn't need. And when I asked her about love she said that love is with us
from the moment we are born. We are never without love. Even in times of despair when we think there is nothing left and no one is walking beside us, we are wrong. We are never without love. Ever.

A few days later when everyone was off hunting and we were alone mummy asked me if I remembered the story about Amah. ‘How could I forget it?' I said. ‘Why?' And then she looked at me and I knew that it was my turn now. That I had to get up and walk away and give her the gift of those last moments alone.

‘Is daddy here?' I asked.

‘He's waiting by the door,' she said. So we held each other and it was magic, and I smelt her hair and felt her incredibly soft skin, just like she must have done with me on the banks of the Mainoru River all those years before, when I was born. I stopped at the doorway and looked back, she was smiling and her eyes were shining and I smiled back at her with all the love in my heart because she looked so happy, and then I turned and walked away.

I caught the lunch-time plane to Darwin. I knew that if I stayed I might crumble and she wouldn't have been able to leave then like she wanted to. I'm so glad I had the courage to respect her wish to be alone.

Mummy had always told me that people's spirits leave their bodies when the tide goes out and she was right of course. She left with the afternoon tide as it flowed out of Apsley Strait and past the places where she used
to hunt with my aunties and past the beach at Garden Point Mission where I had stood as a little girl watching the moon.

Mario was the one who found mummy, who was well and truly on her way by then. Louis rang me to let me know the news. I didn't tell him that I already knew.

I wanted to wash the body she left behind. I wanted to get the ash of the black wattle and wash each part of her like I had been washed when I was born but my Aunty Cassie Palipuaminni said that it was her job to do that and it would be an honour. So I sat up all night waiting for the dawn and the first day of my life without my mum. And what a beautiful dawn it was too with a sunrise streaked with pastel pinks and purple and a hint of peach. It was my mum's gift to me to let me know that life continues on.

I hadn't paid any mind to arranging a flight back to Nguiu so when I arrived at Wimray, the airline service, I had no idea if I could get a seat. But Ray Allwright, the owner of Wimray, who was one of the crankiest people I knew, had a seat waiting for me, bless him. Somewhere inside that grumpy exterior lay a heart of gold and I'll always be grateful to him for his kindness.

When I arrived mummy had already been washed and wrapped in a shroud. Although her room where she lay on her wire-framed bed was full of people, it felt so empty now. I know some like to hang around for a bit when they
die but she was well and truly gone. At about ten o'clock a truck arrived with mummy's kinship fathers and they lifted her on her bed onto the back of the truck. They were all painted up and wearing their
parmagini
and
nargas
, some were crying and it was so heartbreaking to watch them in their grief. I sat on the bed with mummy and we headed off to the mango trees. With the life force gone she was just a tiny little bundle wrapped in a white sheet.

Someone had placed two chairs for Louis and me at the front next to mummy and during the ceremony people filed past shaking our hands. It was a massive funeral and so many people had a story about my mum that they wanted to share. I was surprised to see how many had loved her, both young and old. At the end the Tiwi Women's Choir sang ‘Silent Night' – I still get a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes when I hear that song. Then Anthony, one of mummy's kinship fathers, asked me if they could take her but I couldn't let her go right then because I could hear so many birds singing and I wanted them to have their last words as well. So everyone waited patiently until I was ready and then I gave her a hug and a kiss and told her to make sure she came and visited me sometimes. Then Anthony and Austen picked her up so gently and put her in her coffin like she was a precious and beautiful thing, which she was, and I felt my heart just cracking and splintering to pieces at the tenderness of those two men.

A grave had been dug for her right next to Casmir. I threw in the first handful of dirt, Louis was next and then Mario and then everyone else. When it had been filled I had to walk over it and not look back but just as I reached the top of the mound, the storm that had been hanging around all day fell out of the sky. A surprisingly cold burst of wind descended on us while a flock of white cockatoos flew into the face of the storm singing out to each other and twisting and cavorting in the updrafts. It was magnificent and it was mummy saying goodbye. And what a fitting end it was too, I was born in a storm and mummy left in one, it couldn't have been more perfect.

When I reached the first tree I couldn't help myself and looked back and there she was. Not at the grave but on the other side, at the trees where the path went down to the mangroves. The path that she had taken me down to learn to hunt for mud crabs and where she collected her pandanus and medicine plants from the bush. We looked at each other for one last second, my beautiful mum and me, and then she was gone.

My mum was right about how the beginning shows you the track that your life will follow. I was born in a rush and I've never sat still, just like she knew would happen. I've followed my own path and this path has always been stormy and full of exciting adventures, both good and bad. And the river of my birth where I was rubbed with the
ashes of the black wattle to keep my spirit tied to that place will be where my children scatter my ashes when I die. So that's how it began for me and that's how it will end. Ashes and a river and a river and my ashes.