Of Ashes and Rivers that Run to the Sea (2 page)

Today is September the twenty-eighth 1988 and I have flown across the continent to visit the woman who gave birth to me. I haven't told her I'm coming because I want it to be a nice surprise. Darwin Airport looks like a big shed where you'd park heavy machinery and hay bales and I take in the rustic corrugated iron and concrete while I head towards the Airnorth counter. Obviously modern technology like lifts and carpet haven't reached this part of the country yet. I show the bloke my ticket to Bathurst Island but he insists I'm not booked to go on any flight, let alone a flight to Bathurst Island. I'm sweating and getting grumpy. Look at the date, I say, it's today, the twenty-eighth of September 1988, and my flight leaves in approximately one hour.

‘I can bloody read,' he says huffily while he picks up the phone to call someone and I stand there shocked at
his uncouth manner. God, I need a fucking drink. I've already located the bar upstairs but the rough-looking characters and the raggle-taggle of blackfellas made me feel decidedly uncomfortable so while I wait for Huffy to sort things out I sit down nearby and take an apple juice bottle filled with wine out of my handbag. I've got a number of these stashed in my suitcase for emergencies like this and hopefully they'll have a nice selection of wine on Bathurst Island to replenish my stocks. The weather is hot and I fantasise about coconut palms and lying on the beach in my bikini with a cold mango daiquiri in my hand. Eventually the ticket drama gets sorted and I give a sigh of relief. I'm grateful I don't have to spend the night in Darwin as I'm impatient to meet my family as soon as possible.

After a bit Huffy calls me and tells me to follow him and we walk onto the tarmac and over to a plane. I blink and look at Huffy and then back at the plane, which isn't much bigger than my car. He must be joking.

‘Yer gonna stand there all day or what?' he says. No, he's not joking.

Up the steps I go and position myself on the seat opposite the doorway. After fumbling around for a few minutes I find the two halves of my seatbelt and clasp them together while the pilot, who appears to have the job of baggage handler as well, stuffs my luggage into the hold in the wing. As the plane taxis up the runway and takes
off I clutch the seat with one hand and gulp my ‘apple juice' with the other. It's terrifying. Hitting a cross-wind the plane lurches sideways before setting a course over some houses, roads and mangroves. An expanse of ocean comes into view and then we are flying towards an empty horizon. My heart in my mouth, I feel the plane rapidly gain altitude so I close my eyes and then immediately force them open again. If we're going to crash I'd at least like to see where I'm going. To calm myself I search the blue depths below for whales. I love whales. I learn later that it's not the ocean, it's the Arafura Sea. I wonder if you can really call seventy kilometres of salt water that ebbs and flows between two shores a ‘sea', it seems a bit pretentious. There are no whales. After about five or ten minutes I see a land mass in the distance and for a bit I forget about the rattling and shaking of the little tin shit-box I'm flying in and enjoy the spectacular view. After another ten minutes the motor changes tempo as the pilot fiddles around with his controls and prepares for landing. As the ocean gives way to land I notice a small township on the shoreline surrounded by bush and a red dirt road heading west. It looks a bit primitive. Then the plane banks and dips sharply like the pilot is attempting to perform an aerial stunt while I cling on for dear life and watch the ground rushing towards me at breakneck speed.

I have survived the trip and after stumbling down the plane steps and resisting the urge to kiss the ground I am
waiting for a taxi at this airport which consists of a tin shed and a dirt airstrip. Nothing has appeared yet except hordes of sandflies and mosquitoes and two chestnut horses picking their way down a nearby road. I find myself hoping that they are not the local mode of transport. But looking on the bright side of things, I am the only passenger who has been dropped off, along with some boxes of stuff which someone will be along to pick up soon, so I'll be able to get a ride with them. Hopefully before the blood-suckers have drained every last drop from my body and left my desiccated husk lying despondently on the airstrip clutching my belongings.

A few fluffy clouds scud across the sky and I try to think which way the houses were when the plane was coming in. Come to think of it, where did that plane go? I was so absorbed in arriving that I didn't notice it had even left. I am weighing up whether to open another ‘apple juice' or to go in the direction of the horses when I hear the sweet sound of a vehicle, and a ute approaches at great speed before pulling up in a cloud of dust. It parks next to the boxes and two men alight and start loading them into the back. I approach them warily as they are black and I can't stop thinking of the old bat's dire warnings of the dangers of shifty black people. On closer inspection they don't look too shifty to me but then what would I know.

‘Do you speak English?' I say slowly and clearly while they look sideways at each other and then back at me.

‘Yes,' says the skinny one in perfect English.

‘Um, can you help me?' I ask.

He looks at me and when I don't say anything he goes on picking up boxes with the fat one as though I wasn't there. I note that the boxes are nearly all picked up and I start to panic. They might drive away and leave me here to die.

‘Can you give me a lift?' I say.

‘Yes,' says the skinny one as the fat one picks up the last box. I give them my mother's name.

I'm not happy as I have been consigned to the back of the ute with the boxes and must sit there hanging on to whatever I can to avoid being flung out as the driver takes the corner on two wheels. He's no better on the straight as he lines up every pothole and bump in the road. The totally fucked suspension bounces me into the air and I'm wondering if I'm ever going to make it there alive when the driver slows. We have reached the turn-off and some houses. I am thankful for my discussion with an anthropologist at the Melbourne Museum who assured me that nobody lives in the bush anymore like when Captain Cook arrived, that Aborigines are civilised now and live in houses. But I am astounded at what I see and gape open-mouthed. This is not the tropical island I had imagined with luscious vegetation and cute little palm-frond houses. It is a dump. I have never seen so many dogs, they lie around or wander or sit scratching in the dust while kids
chase each other, lost in their own world of play. I feel myself blushing at the sight of their bare arse cheeks and private parts. Although I saw my sister naked in the bath when we were kids the sight of this exuberant and mass nudity embarrasses me to the core and I modestly attempt to focus my gaze elsewhere. Groups of black people sitting on their verandas and under trees watch us go past. I've never seen so many black faces and I'm feeling very uncomfortable under their curious and scrutinising gaze. The houses look like they should be condemned, with missing windows and doors hanging off their hinges, but there are people wandering out of them and washing hanging on rope lines so they must actually be lived in. Unpleasant and unfamiliar smells pervade the air and I put my hand over my nose to block them. I'm wondering what the fuck I've gotten myself into when we pull up in front of a house. It's no better than any of the others we've passed except that the front yard has been recently raked and a small pile of soft-drink cans and assorted detritus sit near the forty-four-gallon drum rubbish bin. There must be some mistake and I tell them so, no mother of mine would live in a house like this. But they sit there waiting for me to dismount so I climb out and they drive off, leaving me in a cloud of exhaust fumes.

I tentatively survey my surroundings and then turn to see a woman coming down the stairs. She walks over and stands beside me.

‘Who are you?' I say in my most imperious voice, affronted by her boldness. How dare she approach me unbidden. This one definitely fits the shifty category and I take a firmer grip on my bag.

‘I'm your mummy,' she says. ‘Come in and have a cup of tea.'

I am flabbergasted and stand there staring at her. My mother! I glare at this impertinent woman. My mum can't possibly be shoe-polish black like this and my mum hasn't laid eyes on me for twenty-five years so how could this black pretender make such a ludicrous claim. And I'm disappointed by the tame response. I've read how they all start wailing and prostrate themselves on the ground when a lost member of the tribe returns but she certainly isn't showing any signs of doing that. I take in the scruffy-looking houses and dry grass. Suddenly that shithole Darwin looks a whole lot brighter than it did an hour ago. I decide to play along with things until I work out what to do next.

We enter the house and I'm surprised to see that there's absolutely nothing inside. The room is devoid of furnishings and fittings, with just a bare lino-covered floor. I am instructed to sit down while she disappears into a side room, presumably to make the tea. I sit on the floor but I'm not liking this, it is dirty and I'm careful to keep my hands in my lap so I don't touch anything that might have germs. The tea is presented to me in what appears
to be a small metal bucket that doesn't look like it's ever been washed. I'm worried about who might have had their mouth and hands on it last and look for the cleanest spot from which to drink. There isn't one. She is drinking out of a corned beef tin and I wonder if she's a bit loopy and this is some strange practice of hers or she's poor and doesn't have another cup. I can feel her watching me so I take a deep breath and then a swig. The tea tastes like shit and wild thoughts of herpes and E.coli swirl around in my brain but I manage to get the mouthful down and the next. I think of the old bat in her twin-set sipping her Earl Grey or Orange Pekoe and feel a momentary pang of nostalgia.

When she's not looking at me, I inspect this woman who is supposed to be my real mother but I'm still not convinced. Apart from her being as black as the ace of spades her nose is much larger than mine and she bears absolutely no resemblance to me at all, and she's short. She is wearing a skirt patterned with blue flowers and a mismatching pink top with a peace sign on it while a beige petticoat with lacy trim peeks out from underneath. Although she is better endowed than I am she isn't wearing a bra which seems a bit incongruous considering she's modestly wearing a petticoat. I wonder if she wears step-ins to keep her guts flat like the old bag back home. I decide I must try to find my real mother tomorrow.

I think the woman masquerading as my mother has sensed my discomfort at our seating arrangements and she suggests we go outside under the tree. This is better, sand has been spread out under the shady branches of an African mahogany and despite the austere surrounds it's really quite pleasant here. We sip our tea and make small talk about nothing in particular while we discreetly size each other up. Meanwhile I have devised a way of pouring the tea into my mouth instead of placing my mouth on the rim of the cup, in the hope that without direct contact I have eliminated a potential source of bacteria. And if there are any germs floating around in the tea my stomach acids will take care of them. I dig my toes into the sand and in doing so suddenly remember our mother's warning about cats and their fondness for shitting in kids' sandpits. This is why I was never allowed to have one.

‘Do you have a cat?' I ask tentatively.

‘Oh no, just them,' she replies, indicating a group of dogs nearby. I breathe a sigh of relief and dig my toes into the sand again.

‘But aunty down the road has big mob, they come ere all the time,' she says.

Oh fucking great.

The bucket of tea has found its way to my bladder and I ask for directions to the toilet. It's a nightmare. The window is missing entirely so anyone out the back can see your head and shoulders as you sit on the throne, and the
smell of raw faeces, even with the missing window, is so strong that I can virtually taste it. Some sort of brown algae is growing in the toilet bowl and I can't see any part of the bowl below the water line. There could be all sorts of wildlife living down there. The rest of the bowl has shit streaked down the sides. I'm feeling quite nauseous at this point but I'm busting for a piss so I do as per ‘Mother's Instructions for Public Toilets' and hover over the seat instead of sitting on it hoping that no one outside is watching me wobbling around. Although our mother's disposable paper toilet seat covers which she carries around in her handbag have always been objects of great amusement to me, I find myself wishing I had some. I make a silent promise to myself that I'll never laugh at this habit of hers again. Someone has written ‘Fuk off' and ‘GS luvs nobody' on the wall with shit. My mind conjures up graphic images of the artist at work. I've pulled my T-shirt up over my nose with the hope of filtering out any airborne bacteria that might be floating around in this rarefied and noisome atmosphere. I finish peeing and escape as quickly as I can.

‘Who made the mess in the toilet?' I ask on my return, but all I get for my question is a blank stare.

This woman who is supposed to be my mother asks me if I'm hungry. ‘Oh yes, I could eat a horse,' I say, and instantly regret it as I cast my mind back to the two horses wandering along the road earlier. She disappears inside
and I hear her rustling around. The dogs wander over to check me out. One of them is virtually hairless, its skin coarse and leathery, and I wonder what this interesting species is called as I've never seen dogs like it before. The others except for the big male have varying shades of hairlessness, so I assume they must have interbred with the hairless one. In fact there's quite a few of them wandering around and I think they must be a special breed that's evolved in isolation from the mainland, like the finches of the Galapagos Islands. They are curious and want to sniff me but I flap my hands at them to try to scare them away while my heart thumps loudly in my chest. I'm shitting myself but they ignore my protestations and hover around like a swarm of flies.