Heat and Light (5 page)

‘My husband,’ Lena tried to say, but her voice got caught in her throat when she saw the stretcher.

‘My love!’ Janet’s voice overpowered Lena’s.

Charlie lay on the stretcher with a neck brace. A paramedic talked to both women. ‘Your husband – he is fine. We’re just taking precautions.’

When Lena reached his side, grabbing his fingers and squeezing them, he gripped them back. A smile formed on his half-parted lips. There wasn’t a mark or scratch on him.

His voice was thick with a chuckle. ‘I’m fine, honey. Just a bump to the head.’

Lena checked twice, pulling his hair to the side. His forehead was clean.

Charlie saw Janet in the distance. He called her closer. His eyes fluttered closed. She was a depth in his ocean, swallowing him. She had three boys, and he always had the feeling one of them was his, but as to which one, he changed his mind each time he saw them.

Also, his wife, still holding his hand. He remembered his delight at the first glance of his daughter’s head wrapped up in a green blanket. He knew that Amy had mended any gaps in their marriage that had emerged over the years. She was seven years old now, and most days they managed to exchange a smile, a humorous, tender or wry one, over her. In the days he wasn’t there, the times when there were things to do, family business and drives down to the Tent Embassy in Canberra, Lena held things together.

The paramedics pulled the women aside, the concern shifting. Both women were covered in dirt and blood. Lena had glass deep in her chin and pine needles in her hair. Janet’s clothes were torn. The paramedics talked to them and checked them out, gathered they both might have whiplash. Two additional neck braces were taken out of the ambulance.

They all piled into the Ambulance together. They stared at the two damaged vehicles as they passed by.

Confined, Lena and Janet faced one another, rocking, both with their backs to a wall, Charlie between them. In that moment, even though they didn’t yet know it, the women aligned themselves to a movement separate from Charlie. In the morning, a pick-up truck was sent to collect the motorcycle and the two vehicles. Insurance claims were settled.

The two women met again, a few years later, at the university – Janet’s alma mater – in a research trial for whiplash patients. They started talking, and meeting after each session. Lena didn’t tell Charlie. By the completion of the trial, they’d become unlikely friends, and revved each other up – they didn’t want to waste their lives on a man who was conflicted.

Charlie hadn’t made a decision between them in his heart, and he wasn’t about to. Lena said it was because he was a Libran. Janet called him a mummy’s boy. They continued to meet in secret, calling it book club, sometimes bringing the children along with them to sit in the corner of the cafe. Janet coaxed Lena to ask for a divorce. The twin twinge in their necks – Lena left, Janet right – would remind them in weak moments of the choices to be made.

The two women developed a fondness and respect for each other. Janet was also thinking of getting out of her loveless marriage. She had pushed herself back into work, and had taken up kickboxing, to great effect on her core. Lena had got a better job at a cafe, found a rental property around the corner from it, and had reunited with relatives that had immigrated. Her daughter became playmates with Janet’s boys.

When Charlie found out that his wife and Janet were friends, it was a terrifying predicament for him at first. By that time he was living on his own in a house in Brisbane. The dishes piled up in the sink and the counter was stacked with newspapers he no longer had the energy to read. He had Amy over on the weekends, and she was often quiet. His prized motorbike had been substituted with a lemon, a real poxy thing, handed down from his brother. He reckoned it embarrassed Amy. One afternoon, Amy’s teacher called him up at work. Amy had waited for her mother to pick her up from school but she hadn’t turned up. Charlie got Amy – she was waiting outside the school office – and they drove to Lena’s house, along the main road. There was an area blocked off, but he didn’t pay too much attention to it, turning into the street. He used the key under the mat to open the door to the stuffy house he hadn’t been in before. He scanned the table for a note, picked up the phone and listened to the messages. It all started to come together as he drove to the hospital. Lena had been hit by two cars while walking across the road to pick up Amy.

At the hospital he rang Janet. She was there, in the room, when they shut down the machine. Janet cried beside the bed. Charlie held Amy, her head under his chin.

He took Amy back to his house. Every night that month they drove the suburbs looking at the Christmas lights. Even if the weather was vicious and the water would leak in by their feet, he wouldn’t head home until she fell asleep against the window. He’d carry her up the stairs and she wouldn’t stir. The drives seemed to help her sleep better, chase the bad dreams away. On stormy nights they both dreamt intensely, violently – they often drowned. Charlie realised it had always been like this, even before Lena had passed. It so happened that particular summer delivered a record number of storms in the south-east, more than any other year. He gazed at his daughter twitching in her sleep as the wind yowled outside.

WATER

No one checks my ticket as I hop on board the ferry. I am the only one who elects to sit outside, and I soon find out why. The wind. I can already feel my face is beaten, my skin stung, my lips chapped. But I have made myself comfortable, my legs drawn up underneath me, and I am away from the other people so I just sit back and feel the wind in my ears. I must fall asleep because the next thing I notice is a man with a moustache standing over me expectantly.

I look at him for a moment before realising he is the ticket collector. I bend down and rummage through my duffel bag. He stands close to me until I find my ticket and he looks at it carefully before stamping it and giving it back to me.

When I look at it again I realise the lady has given me a return ticket, and I haven’t twigged. I won’t be needing it – it is only of use today. I am still sleepy, and when I get up my legs are shot with lead so I stumble and drop the ticket overboard. I look over the edge, though the little bit of paper has already been swallowed up by the whitewater surge of the boat, and I feel a misplaced sense of grief.

When I’d told my mother I was going to work on Russell Island, I admitted it was by no means an easy thing, yet I didn’t feel any reluctance leaving the mainland and heading off in the ferry, powering through the thrilling surge of ocean. On the way to Russell, we passed the smaller islands; they glinted in the sun.

It isn’t long until I guess the shape before us is Russell, and I make out the buildings, the smoke from the industry tankers. There is a lot of greenery, and a thin edge of sand, like icing on a cake. The attendant announces our destination and the ferry stops.

I arrive on a Saturday, so I have a day and a half to settle in before starting on Monday. The contracting company provides a stand-up house at the base on Russell Island. It suits me fine. I thought Russell would be what you expect of an island – peaceful, isolated, good for my thoughts, but it’s not. It’s a centre of activity, the company is a good way along to completing the ‘Australia2’ project for the government by the 2028 deadline.

My place is an easy five-minute walk from the ferry, in the quieter residential section. There is a grocery store just by the ferry terminal, convenient, and not too expensive as you would think. My street is full of houses that look exactly like mine. To use my mobile phone, I have to keep walking to the end of the street, and there the industry stand-ups start.

My place is fully furnished. All I have to unpack is my blanket and clothes and a toaster. Everything in the house smells brand new, the off-gassing piping through my lungs. It is like a hotel room – the bed has sheets on it and the fridge is compact. I’ll have to stop myself from leaving the towels on the floor; there won’t be anyone around while I’m out.

On the mainland the other week my cousin Julie and I met at the old post office and had a drink. I’m still getting to know Julie. She is twenty years older than me, but she lets me forget it. Julie lives in the apartments in the Story Bridge, built just a few years ago. Julie has lived most of her life in slimehole Sydney, she’s only just moved back here. I’m glad Julie called me when she came back and we’ve been meeting, because I want to get closer to that side of the family. Dad died when I was young. My mum is white and she tells me a bit about my family but I don’t know much. I know they were all artists – my dad, Julie’s dad, my other uncle and my grandmother. It’s not like it used to be for artists. I can’t paint; I was lucky, I guess.

Julie also doesn’t paint. She works now at the Freedom of Speech office, in the IT department. On her weekends for some extra cash Julie does tarot card readings in her apartment.

We talk about How Things Are Really Shit Now. Julie said it began ten years ago: she was there. In August 2012, a young Tanya Sparkle went to see Hugh Ngo speak at the Gallery of Modern Art. Julie saw Tanya sitting across from her. She could tell, even with the distance between them, that Tanya was slipping out of her skin to ask a question, and sure enough when the audience was called Tanya announced herself, a long, wielded introduction. She gave a spiel about reconciliation, which she stylised to ‘recon’ and then she said to Hugh, ‘I am an optimist. I believe one day Aboriginal people will get back what they lost and more.’

The crowd grew quiet and looked at each other. Julie snickered.

Hugh raised an eyebrow. ‘What?’ he said. ‘Are you mob gonna give us two countries?’

Tanya Sparkle has really thrived as a female leader of this country. Where J. Gill had been a scapegoat, a cardboard target, as hated and painted as strict headmistresses are, it all went right for Tanya.

When Tanya Sparkle became President I was in the pool sticking laps. I got out, dried my legs, and wondered for the first time where everyone was. The women were all on the street.

President Sparkle has made a few significant reforms in her tenure, particularly to Indigenous affairs. Advancement of native title, health, employment, education, creative control and recognition of culture were the main objectives of the policy.

As Julie says, President Sparkle really
shit on
the public transport system. Catching a bus has become a nightmare. Sometimes you’d rather spend your money on a cab. A few years ago, all the route numbers were replaced with language names for destinations, such as Turrbal, causing mass commuter confusion. To start with, there were many inaccuracies in the places and the names, the communities were not consulted. The names they did match up with locations weren’t spelt phonetically and not with the community in mind.

It’s hard to know what to do at the major bus interchange. The buses whoosh by and I feel a strong sense of displacement. I’m not sure if it comes from being an Aboriginal person, or if it’s as disconcerting for the rest of the public transport users. When it began, I once got on the Turrbal bus thinking I was going to Toombul shopping centre.

Julie tells stories from working at the Freedom of Speech office. I have a friend who actually went to jail over a text message – they search your phone at random any number of times a year for any sort of provocative material, particularly what they call racial violation. It has been three years since the social media ban.

Julie showed me the Census stats recently: Aboriginal spirituality is on its way to becoming the most popular religion. In the churches now it’s only white guys preaching.

Just after we became a republic, the Australian anthem was changed to the 2012 Jess Mauboy hit, ‘Gotcha’. The national flag is a horrible mash-up job of the old flag and both the Aboriginal flag and the Torres Strait Islander flag. It looks like Tanya Sparkle’s seven-year-old son did it in Paint.

Aboriginal art has almost wiped out all other Australian art. A journo said recently in
The
Australian
, ‘If you’re not black, forget it.’ The sad thing is, most Aboriginal artists crack under the enormous pressure and celebrity, from the commodification of their work. You only have to look at my family for examples of that.

President Sparkle is determined to leave her legacy on native title. A second ‘country’ is being built, by using the islands off southern Moreton Bay. If Julie’s story is true, Sparkle really did get the idea off Hugh Ngo at that gallery opening. The re-forming company are going to create new land between the twenty or so islands off the Brisbane coastline, joining them to create a super island. This is where Aboriginal people can apply to live. In the application criteria they are required to show how they have been removed or disconnected from their country – priority given to those who don’t even know where they’ve come from. Queensland’s the first state to implement the policy, with other states to follow. The community will be effectively self-governed, like the Torres Strait.

What I don’t think our President has covered on her list is loss of culture. Young people are growing up and not having a clue who they are or who they should be.

Julie laughs at me, because I’ve just got this job in the re-forming industry. Yes, I know, I told Julie, they’re half our problems, and she can’t understand it – but it’s much better money than I was getting shooting pigeons for the local council. When the position for a ‘Cultural Liaison Officer’ came up I thought great, I’d love the chance to work with other Aboriginal people, because that’s another way of finding out about my culture and what I missed out on growing up.

Well, the real reason Julie laughed at me when I got back to her after the interview was because I wasn’t actually going to be working with Aboriginal people in my Cultural Liaison Officer role.

I’ll be working with what they call the ‘sandplants’. There’s a lot of talk about them in the media lately, all sensationalist crap, I reckon, like asylum seekers in the naughties. I don’t really know much about them to be honest. I don’t want to call them ‘sandplants’ – ‘sandpeople’ or ‘plantpeople’ seems more sensitive, but I don’t know which to use.

On Monday, I head on foot to the Science Centre on the other side of the island. From my house, facing out, I’d seen three brightly coloured temporary buildings, oddly shaped. The Science Centre is the red temporary building. This is where I find our office, around the side, and meet my boss, Milligan. He seems alright, easy to talk to. He doesn’t look like what I pictured; he doesn’t have a beard or glasses.

Milligan had explained already on the phone that it was really a ‘hands-on’ sort of job. I wasn’t going to be sitting down behind a desk sipping from an eco-cup nine-to-five like Julie did. I had to get out and talk to these plantpeople, and this required taking the company’s tinny out to the smaller desolate islands on the rough edges of Russell. Milligan had told me this so I could show up with the proper gear: jeans, boots, company polo and a bag they’d given me, horribly flimsy, like one you’d get from a conference.

Milligan assures me that steering the boat is really easy, though I am glad to hear it when he says he’s taking me out the first time.

Two or so weeks earlier, when I’d found out I got the job, Milligan sent me by email quite a bit of material to study beforehand. It included research papers on the plantpeople, newspaper clippings and official guvvie policy papers. I have to admit I only really started reading through it last night, but I feel I know a lot more about them now.

These creatures, beings, I’m not yet comfortable on
how to place them, were formed when they started
experi
menting here, mining the sea in preparation for the islandising. It was a young botanist (I know this, as he is a friend of Milligan’s) who first discovered them: he distinguished their green human-like heads lined up on the banks of Russell Island. A lot doesn’t make much sense to me yet. I have a feeling the documents don’t say everything.

Right from the start, the government has been very protective of them, so they don’t become a public spectacle. You need permission from a government official to go near the population.

Basically, they present a problem for the Project at this stage, as all the southern Moreton Bay islands are being evacuated. This means everyone has to leave their homes and businesses for an indeterminate amount of time while the engineers work on the re-forming. These plantpeople, who divide their time between the water, Russell Island and the edges of some of the smaller unoccupied islands, must cooperate during the process, for the safety of all.

Some of them ‘root’ – that is, they firm their roots to an area, into the ground, and are hard to persuade to move; you can’t get them away. Milligan tells me there are a few that actively voice their opinions within the community, speaking out against the government and their plans.

They are a very intelligent species. I read a transcript of an interview with one of them. She spoke well, from the notes, a steady, formalistic English. Hers was the only first-person account and insight I have into what these people are about. A plant’s mind.

The government doesn’t know the exact number of the population, anywhere from seventy to a hundred is their guess. The plantpeople mostly used to inhabit Russell Island, but since the government has moved in, they have split to the closest islands.

Some of the plantpeople are regularly called in to the Science Centre for testing. They call them ‘specimens’ here, I notice, and I try to follow suit but it’s an odd word on my tongue.

During my induction I sit down with my boss in his office and we have a meeting with Sophie, the admin girl, also present. My boss tells me to ‘keep things as peaceful as possible’. He suggests I talk to the leader. Her name is Larapinta. Sophie adds, ‘there is Hinter, too.’ Milligan says, ‘but he’s more difficult.’

Milligan tells me Sophie will take me on a tour of the facility and sort out my paperwork. He says he’ll take me out on the tinny on Thursday, and I assume it’s the last I’ll see of him today. I hope Sophie will sort everything out quickly; the waiting around part of a new job always stresses me out. I just want to get started and learn the ropes as soon as I can. Sophie takes me out of the office section and shows me the laboratories, loading dock and the examination rooms. After a while, I don’t really bother remembering people’s names.

She swipes us back into our office space and puts me at a currently unoccupied desk. She downloads the paperwork for a security pass and gets me to fill it in. In between filling in other forms, I go to the water cooler and I grab a plastic cup from up the top.

Then I see Milligan coming back. ‘Larapinta’s here now,’ he says. ‘Meeting room one.’

‘Oh, right,’ I say, and straighten up. I hear my boots tap against the temporary, cheap wooden tiles as I walk down the hall. I don’t know where to go and walk around for a while from door to door, but I eventually remember the meeting rooms are just after the toilets, next to the examination room.

There are two sandplants standing outside the exam room. I walk past quickly. Seeing them for the first time, I am struck both by how startlingly human-like they are, and how alarmingly unhuman they are. Green, like something you would see in a comic strip, but they are real.