Of Ashes and Rivers that Run to the Sea (9 page)

In the street light coming through a chink in the curtain I notice my little gecko friend Russell on the ceiling. He has been hanging around my room all day and I've called him Russell because he makes a rustly, clicky noise when he sings, like the clock on that TV show
Sixty Minutes
. I don't know why geckos sing but I've noticed that Russell is quite vocal and that no other gecko messes with him. I try to make clicking noises at him but he ignores me. He darts around after insects that have landed on the ceiling nearby or stalks them until he is close enough to pounce. He is a good hunter and doesn't usually miss. I never tire of watching him and the escapades of the other geckoes now that I don't have a TV to watch. My thoughts turn to his feet and how he must stick to the ceiling. Maybe
there are little suction pads on his toes that hold him in place and when he walks they might sound like a microscopic version of the suction pads on a rubber bath mat when it's being pulled up. But suddenly Russell's suction pads fail him and Russell, who was directly overhead, lands with a fleshy plop onto my exposed stomach. For a second I feel his skin against my skin. His translucent skin through which you can see dark-coloured patches of his internal organs and his little heart beating. Then his legs scurry across my belly while some amazing force propels me from my lying-down position to a standing-up position in two seconds flat. Shrieking and slapping at my body in case he's still there somewhere, I race into the lounge room where mummy, JJ and Lorraine raise their tousled heads from sleep. They are instantly awake when they see that I'm only dressed in my bra and underpants. Thankfully my underwear is matching. Realising that Russell is not on me I stop slapping and gabbling and point at my door. Lorraine gets up to see what the fuss is about but she can't see Russell anywhere and tells me he's gone and to go back to sleep. Go back to sleep, I wasn't asleep in the first place. It still evades me as I anxiously scan the ceiling and walls for Russell in case he tries that stunt again. But Russell must be curled up in some nice hidey-hole sleeping and during my anxious wait he doesn't make an appearance again and I finally drop off.

The shower is an awful place. It is a square yellow fibre-glass shower bottom sitting straight on the floor with the drain-hole with no grate over it stuck to a white PVC pipe, where a lot of light shines through into the shower in the daytime. There is no shower curtain and nowhere to hang one. The water goes everywhere, on the floor, up the walls, everywhere, no matter how hard you try to keep it in the shower base. The only way to keep my clean clothes and towel dry is to tie them in a plastic bag to the door handle. I wear my thongs in the shower so that when I step out my feet don't get dirty again on the floor, and so I don't get tinea because the old bat always told me that you get tinea from other people's showers. But the worst part of the shower is that things live underneath it in the dark recesses that go up both sides and around the back as there is no tiling to block it off. So far I've encountered cockroaches and green tree frogs and one of them is enormous. The shower is at its most terrifying when I wash my hair and my eyes are closed because I think something is going to jump on me. I've had a few heart-stopping moments when I've opened my eyes and the frogs have been sitting there looking at me but so far they've kept to themselves. I'm surprised they come out at all because the soap and shampoo must irritate their skin but they must like sitting under the cold water like I do when I'm hot and in a bad mood. I made the mistake of leaving my soap and shampoo in the shower once, only to come back
and find it all gone. I knew mummy wasn't the culprit because she told me that she has never used soap in her life and she doesn't intend to start, because it makes her sweat. She only uses water to wash with like our mob has been doing for thousands of years. She doesn't smell or anything but it still seems a bit strange and I'm so used to using soap that I couldn't imagine my life without it. Every night when I have my shower I wash my dirty clothes from the day as well and hang them out on a rope tied between two veranda posts. I wash my sheets and towels and tea towels every Saturday morning. Although previously I looked for every reason to avoid doing the washing, until I had to because I'd run out of underwear or something, I like the routine of doing it every day now. It seems to give my day some structure.

I've used one of my sarongs to make a curtain for the toilet and I have threatened everyone not to remove it or they'll have to deal with me. Mummy thinks it's a waste of a perfectly good sarong but I don't want anyone outside to see me using the loo so for me it's worth the sacrifice. My thigh muscles are getting used to hovering over the toilet and not sitting on it in case there are germs, there were a few times when they nearly gave way from the strain but I'm mastering it now. There is also no seat and for some reason that makes the toilet seem even germier. Dunny paper is another contentious issue around here, we all supply our
own and take it back to our rooms when we are finished otherwise there are huge fights over who's used it all up. I've told mummy she can share mine but she's never asked for it so maybe she doesn't use dunny paper either. And the dunny paper is one-ply, like sandpaper, not soft and pliable like I'm used to, so I use it sparingly or risk taking layers of skin off with it. The store manager must think blackfellas have arses made of stone or something. When I've finished in the toilet I tie up the sarong so the toilet can air. I've promised myself I'll get some bleach to put down it to kill the algal forest when I eventually go to the shop, which I have avoided because it looks scary with the hordes of black people hanging around it. Although I'm getting used to my own black family I'm still a bit worried by mass gatherings of black people.

There are no rules about cleaning the lounge room and kitchen or the back and front verandas so I give them a sweep every day. Thankfully people have stopped throwing their used teabags everywhere and spitting after I kept whingeing about it. Sometimes Mario rakes the yard. If someone's shoes or shorts are lying around he doesn't care, he just sweeps them all up and into the bin they go. When I ask him why he replies that he doesn't ask questions and goes on raking. I like that about Mario, no messing around. As for my bedroom, I sweep it with a dustpan and brush and mop it with an old tea towel every day and slowly the lino changes colour from brown
to green. I show it to mummy and she laughs and says the whole house was like that once. She says this house was brand new when she moved in all those years ago when Louis was a baby and she'd won it in a raffle.

Mummy is taking me to the store for the first time and I'm actually excited. I was quite worried at first in case there were riots or something, but after going to the footy on the weekend with my family for protection I've gotten over my fear of big crowds of black people. I now feel quite foolish for thinking they could be harmful to me and reckon I must have gotten this irrational fear from my white parents.

Apart from the garage and the club there are no other places to spend your money except for the store. It doesn't look too flash on the outside though, it's just a big shed with a dusty waiting area and a few African mahogany trees for shade. There are some cars parked along the front and a bunch of people hanging around near the doors waiting for the place to open. We wander over to where Aunty Marie
Evelyn is waiting with some young woman who sports a magnificent moustache. She is not in the least bit self-conscious about it nor about her legs which are so hairy you could plait them. I've noticed that none of the women around here shave their legs or underarms or pluck their eyebrows, something I spend endless hours on. I wonder what state this young woman's pubic hair must be in and if she is making some sort of feminist statement before consulting my watch, my only concession to vanity on this island. It's already five minutes past opening hours which I point out to mummy but she just grunts and goes on talking to aunty and the young woman. No one else hanging around outside the shop seems very worried either and I realise that the contrary opening hours might be a regular occurrence.

Some young bloke opens the doors and then immediately flattens himself against the wall before everyone stampedes inside. This must be because closing hours are just as unpredictable as opening, and everyone has to grab what they can before being catapulted out the door again. I have visions of people racing up and down the aisles, trampling children and the elderly underfoot in their frantic quest to scrape armloads of groceries off the shelves into their speeding trolleys before the doors clang shut in their faces. My anxiety levels rise perceptibly with this thought and I stick close to mummy as we get carried inside by the throng. I notice a few dogs slipping in through the jumble of legs but no one shoos them outside.

Once inside I look for a quiet spot and take in my surroundings while mummy rushes off. There are big drums of flour and everything is sold in bulk like the toilet paper and washing powder. There is no fruit and vegetable section, just a box of wilted lettuce and a few tomatoes, and there is no bleach, only this powdered stuff called Vim that we used as kids to clean up after ourselves when we had a bath. I can't find any toilet brushes either so it looks like the algae in mummy's toilet is going to stay right where it is. There is a shelf with a few exotic items for sale and I reach for a tin of pineapple and nearly drop it in shock after noting the use-by date expired over three years ago. A packet of Sao biscuits appears to have reached the final stages of decomposition and crumbles to dust in my hands, while objects resembling mummified oranges squat forlornly in their box on the floor. I can understand now why people are still hunting for food like they did before white settlement – the selection is pitiful.

I search the melee for mummy and find her fighting with some woman over a drum of flour. There is a stack of flour drums right next to her, all the same brand and the same size, but mummy wants this one. She suddenly cracks the woman on the shins with her walking stick and triumphantly stalks off with her trophy, leaving the woman cursing and shaking her fist at the pair of us while I slink after mummy. We move into the next aisle and mummy picks up a massive tin of powdered milk and a big tin of
sugar and tells me to get a box to put them in. I locate the boxes and grab one but mummy sends me back for a bigger one. I grab a disposable nappy box thinking this will shut her up, not realising that it will only provide her with more space to fill.

After grabbing some tins of baked beans and something that feels like a lump of granite in a bread bag, mummy heads for the frozen meat section in our ever-widening search for something edible. The packets contain lumps of fat, gristle and bone slivered by a few threads of something that resembles meat. They are a disgrace. I look on in amazement as people jostle one another to grab more prime specimens of this heart-attack food and dump it into waiting arms and boxes.

‘The barge came in this morning,' explains a rather large man, who by the look of him and his band of willing helpers are about to carry away the entire section. Another grabs a doorstep-sized chunk from the diminishing pile and scuttles off to the cash register with his prize while others nod and murmur approvingly.

Mummy's box that I have ended up carrying has gotten quite heavy by now so I ask where a trolley can be located. She ignores me as we head into the hardware section where an axe and a billy are dumped on top of the box whose arse-end is threatening to give way along with my arms and legs. I plonk it on the floor and sit down beside it in protest while mummy keeps going. A rather hideous blanket is
displayed on the wall and as mummy scans the shelves for more stuff, I study it closely to see if the misshapen and deformed tiger on it is yawning or roaring with pain. Now that was a mistake, wasn't it. Mummy spots it and grabs one from the shelf to add to the growing pile in the box. At her shrill insistence all within hearing range flock to view this macabre spectacle and grab an ugly blanket for themselves. I spot Louis and wave him over as my arms are about to give way from carrying the groceries.

‘Mummy ready now,' he says cheerfully as he picks up the box and heads for the cash register where she is waiting for us. I am feeling really grumpy after lugging that lot around but I say nothing, telling myself we are going home now and it's alright.

The checkout operator who, mummy explains, is my kinship sister, runs the items past the scanner at high speed and flings them into the box. Then we are presented with a bill that is hugely disproportionate to the amount of groceries. Mummy displays her usual nonchalance but I am flabbergasted. There is an uncomfortable silence until I realise that sister-girl on the cash register and mummy are waiting for me to pay up. Louis has cleverly disappeared and I disbelievingly reach into my bag for my wallet and hand over the money. Although I'm not happy about it, I know my embarrassment at saying I didn't have any money would have been far worse for my ego than paying up. And I know this is something I need to get over
if I don't want to find myself constantly broke. I think they've worked out that I don't know the rules and they are going to exploit this fact until I learn to play the game and say I don't have any money like everybody else does.

There was a community meeting yesterday to vote on whether the club should be open to everyone over the age of eighteen, and mummy and I are waiting for Louis to get home and tell us the verdict. When I come out of the loo he's there with a big grin on his face. They voted yes. Despite all the to-ing and fro-ing and the expected opposition from the religious quarter, it has been passed. I ponder the possibility of vote-rigging and corruption among the ranks of serious-faced council board members (including Louis) who would have had the last say. But how can you be bribed in a place where there is no such thing as personal possessions, where everyone shares and owns what everyone else does? If you buy a new car you can count on one hand the number of times your arse will get to sit in the driver's seat before it becomes public property. If you buy a washing
machine you always end up washing your clothes by hand because the machine is going twenty-four hours a day with everyone else's stuff in it. Like mummy's that ended up by the road for rubbish collection with someone's clothes still in it after it gave up the ghost. But in the end does it really matter how the decision was reached because now I don't have to sit at home and watch my mum and brothers head off to the club without me and then watch them stagger home afterwards. And if I'm going to have to listen to their drunken arguments afterwards then at least I can join in.

Monday comes. It's 3.30 pm. I know this because mummy's circadian rhythm has unfailingly sent an alarm to her brain telling her to arise from her afternoon siesta and have a shower. She is now waiting for me to do the same because today I am going to the club for the first time. I fuss over what I am going to wear while mummy taps her foot impatiently, she doesn't care about the store being open late but it seems that the club is a different matter.

We arrive and it feels like a carnival as new patrons pour in through the gates at opening time. I follow mummy inside to her favourite spot in the corner where she sits next to the wire grating where she can catch the breeze. In the middle is an enormous sacred tree that the club, or the Nguiu Ulintjinni Association, has been built around. There is a hole where it pokes up through the roof and unfolds into a beautiful big canopy, while underneath
there is sand surrounded by a concrete border where the old men and their dogs sit. Mummy explains that we have to buy beer tickets and present them to the bar. When I ask her why, she tells me that the white publican thinks the blokes serving behind the bar might rip him off so if one cashier sells the beer tickets the publican has only one person to keep an eye on. But even with the camera rigged up over the cashier, it doesn't stop them from folding in a few undetected free ones when they hand over the drinks, and with the cashier being mummy's nephew, my immediate family never pays for the total amount we receive. There are no stubbies or cans, everything is on tap, and we get served the beer in plastic cups so they can't get broken.

I can see mummy has positioned herself well as the route to the main bar is on her right so she can scan who is going past and scab beer tickets off them as well, even though she already has a roll secreted in her handbag.

When I protest about the deceit of her secret stash mummy explains that this is being smart not selfish and everyone does it. She manages to scab four tickets off a smiling young man and then sends me off to the bar with two tickets. It is bedlam but despite the crush of humanity there is still some sort of order as people wait for their turn to be served. There are five men pulling beers behind the bar including one of my aminays but the smile is soon wiped off my face when he refuses to serve me and tells me
that no granddaughter of his is going to become a drunk if he can help it. He then proceeds to tell the others not to serve me before stalking off and serving someone else. I know there is no point arguing with him so I turn to go find Louis to get the beer. But my cousin Fabian is right behind me, so I slip the two tickets into his hand and head back to mummy.

I arrive back to find Aunty Ruthie sitting next to mummy. Apparently aunty's had a fight with some woman and knowing that this woman is a drinker will probably be there today. She has decided that it'll be safer if she sticks with mummy who, I've been told, can hold her own in a fight if she has to. I sit down and aunty immediately launches into her latest drama.

‘An she wooden let me get up, she flog me proper!' says aunty, who had been caught in a compromising situation with someone else's husband and was most indignant at the punishment meted out to her. ‘She got no manners, dat one.'

‘Kwa, she proper cheeky orright,' agrees mummy.

At this point I'm distracted by my kinship father Clarence giving me two beer tickets. Thanking him I return to the conversation to find aunty giving mummy a blow-by-blow description of her beating.

‘An ere too,' she says, pointing to somewhere on her back, ‘an ere, an ere she flog me big time. An she got proper filthy tongue dat one.'

‘Oh goodness,' replies mummy in her most injured tone of voice while she rubs aunty's hand consolingly.

‘Don't you think she had a right to be annoyed?' I venture. ‘It was her husband you were caught with.'

Mummy and aunty look at me like I'm mad.

‘
Karlu
, not after what she did to dat woman from Ngukurr's usband,' mummy says, her voice rising with indignation. ‘Dat woman got no shame, she big hole dat one.'

Suddenly the woman turns up from out of nowhere and starts yelling at aunty. Apart from ‘slut' and a few other choice expletives the rest is an incoherent babble. I recognise her from the shop and mummy always smiles at her but she isn't smiling at her now. Aunty, never one to take anything sitting down, takes a massive swig of beer, hands her cup to mummy, stands up and gives the woman a big shove. She promptly crumples into a heap on the floor and then aunty is on top of her with her hands around the woman's throat repeatedly banging her head against the concrete floor. At least the woman has stopped yelling now, although the strangled noises issuing from her mouth are getting me worried. Having seen aunty's temper in action I know better than to try to stop her so I keep well back from the two women so they can have their space.

Suddenly with no warning it's on and our corner erupts into a massive free-for-all. Mummy is wildly swinging her walking stick and kicking people while I'm trying to get
aunty to release her hold on the woman's throat before she passes out. I abandon this idea as the toes of my left foot are crushed by mummy's left clodhopper and then immediately stomped on by her right one, my howls of pain mingling with the noise of the crowd who are milling around and egging them on, including cousin Fabian who has our drinks. Aunty has finally released her hold on the woman and is cracking some other poor victim across the back with a milk crate while another is trying to unsuccessfully pull her skirt that's been dragged down to her knees back up to her waist where it belongs. Mummy's walking stick whacks me with a resounding blow to the ribs while the milk crate comes hurtling from out of nowhere and skims past my head.

I've had enough and attempt to squeeze my way through the melee on my hands and knees before I get seriously injured. But suddenly it's over as quickly as it began and the crowd disappears around me in a wave of trampling feet while I am foolishly left on my hands and knees in the empty corner looking up at the face of the cop from Milikapiti. I look around just to make sure, but no, even mummy with her gammy leg has stampeded off with the others and left me alone and defenceless. There is only a full-time police presence on Melville Island and the cops visit Nguiu every fortnight to do car regos and paperwork and the like, and he had to be here today of all days.

But he doesn't believe me when I say I don't know
anything about the fight. ‘True. I was just sitting there minding my own business,' I say as he makes his coffee and sits down.

‘Well, what's this then,' he says, indicating my bleeding toes and the bruised egg growing in the middle of my forehead.

‘Oh, I was born like that,' I say. ‘In fact, you should see the two interesting growths on my chest.'

He smirks and is about to say something but changes his mind and picks up his car keys instead. I had been hoping that he'd take me back to Melville Island and lock me up in the nice air-conditioned cells and feed me three prison meals a day for hindering justice or obstructing him in his enquiries; it would have made a nice change from the circus at mummy's place. But no, he has to go to the barge landing to pick up his offsider and after telling me that he'll be arresting me again real soon so he can check out my growths he drops me off at mummy's place.