Heat and Light (8 page)

I’m just letting you know as a Cultural Liaison Officer, mediator between them and us, to keep an eye out for those sort of things going on. You’re a little naive; I know such things might seem strange and unlikely to you, but it can happen. It could have deadly effects.’

I don’t think Milligan knows, in our culture,
deadly
means really good. I decided not to tell him that.

I’ve been taking notes in the field. About the tides, the winds and how many strokes it takes me to get to each isle on the belt.

I’m getting better. My hands no longer blister. When Larapinta is in the boat the time goes faster. I can get swept into a conversation about the geography and don’t notice my arms clenching back and forth until I’m at the bank.

My hair’s getting long. I’m thinking of getting it cut next time I’m on the mainland. Sometimes I forget a band or a tie when I’m out on the boat, and it cuts into my face like a whip.

I’ve been going for longer walks lately. I tell myself it’s to stretch out my legs after all those hours on the boat, but really it’s because of the feeling of being cramped up on the island. I know it too well. It takes nineteen minutes to walk the whole island.

It’s about time I go see my mother, eat cold macaroni in the kitchen I grew up in. She always brushes back my unkempt fringe, and she’ll dig out a batch of old photos, a birthday card I made my father. Why does she do it? I don’t cry anymore. I can talk about my father without crying.

Mum still thinks that pasta is my favourite thing ever. To be fair, I probably don’t know her as well as I think I do either, not anymore. She has a whole other life in the weeks, sometimes months I don’t see her.

After Dad died, Mum and I were inseparable for a while. She even got a job at my school. The thing is, I was always closer to Dad, and that didn’t change, even after he was dead. My mother no doubt couldn’t understand it, it probably frustrated her a little bit, as when he was alive, Dad wasn’t around. He was always in the studio he shared with his brothers, or with family, or travelling for or with his art.

We stand on the second isle and I pass out the formula, like I do every morning. I watch Larapinta kissing a seedling’s head, brushing the pillow-like fronds of hair out of his eyes. I like the seedlings, babies, really they are a bundle of brown, often held by the others.

Larapinta doesn’t wait for the quiet moments to ask her usual odd questions. ‘What is it like to menstruate?’

I shrug and no longer hesitate, used to her quirkiness. ‘Ah. I guess it’s not too bad. I don’t mind it. It’s part of being a woman. Damn expensive, though. All that tax. Thought President Sparkle would have done something about it.’

‘Are you menstruating now?’ Larapinta asks.

‘I am due to.’

‘Does it affect your sexual activity?’

‘No, not really.’

‘Good,’ she says, and she
winks.

She’s letting me know she wants to try something out. We were talking about how the bay is known for its abundance of seafood. Everywhere, a fisherman’s dream. She talks low to me, tells me I should invite her to spend the afternoon and we’ll cook a fresh catch, eat together.

She doesn’t eat, but she’d like to try for me, even just pretend. I look at her mouth, red and ripe as a baby animal’s.

‘Neither of us know how to fish, though,’ I say, even though I shouldn’t humour her.

‘We’ll get a bottle of nice wine.’

‘Are you talking about seduction?’ A thought comes to my head. I’m being seduced by a plant. ‘It’s foolish, Larapinta.’

She looks back down at her e-reader.

I continue. ‘I can’t, professionally. Personally as well. We need to stick in our own corners.’

I’m glad she can’t judge me. I’m afraid she can see into me.

Julie has already ordered my regular, the lasagne and chips. She’s gotten herself a salad. She’s on a diet. ‘Not going too well,’ she says about it. ‘The other day I picked up a donut. I wish I had the energy I used to. I want to play tennis again.’

‘You’re looking healthy to me.’ I look at her clear olive skin, her white teeth. Electric blue eyes: contacts.

She reaches for the dressing. I don’t tell her about Larapinta. I don’t know how she’d react about me getting along with a plantperson. Julie already thinks I’m anti-social.

A band plays in the corner. There are two young fellas playing together. One main singer with a sweet voice, tall and wearing a grey beanie. The other man sits on a drum and plays it; he’s a shorter, older fella. He sings in some songs, a quick, direct style, almost like a rap. Julie says the second singer is awful. I don’t know, maybe I’ve been hanging out too much with Larapinta, but I don’t have a taste filter. I think they’re both good at what they do. If you want to do a five-minute solo imitating the sound of a train in a tunnel, that’s okay.

Because of the music, Julie makes us move to the back. She talks a bit more about Sparkle. When she was in Sydney, Julie was heavily involved in the art scene, and also campaigning for our people. What my mum says about Julie when she’s tired is that Julie uses her looks to get what she wants. Julie did have a flash job down in Sydney, but she worked hard for it, I know she did.

Sometime during the night Julie talks about the heavy pay cut she took for her new job in Brisbane. She’s losing money as she still hasn’t yet found a buyer for her place in Sydney. ‘I should get into painting,’ Julie jokes. ‘All I have to do is a few brown dots and our totem.’

‘What’s our totem?’ I ask her.

‘Oh, come on, you know that,’ Julie says. She takes a sip. ‘It’s a dugong.’

It is instinctive; I’ve had too much to drink. I get off the ferry in the middle of the night and go to the beach and lie down. When I wake up I feel the hot sand press against my cheek and my thoughts immediately go to Larapinta. I find myself imagining the tart taste of her mouth. She comes up too often, in my dreams and in waking, on my afternoon walks and in the cold morning air. She is deliberate in the way she talks to me. I am a curiosity she wants to explore. I’m sure if it was someone else it would be the same to her. I just happen to be here, in a boat with her seven hours a day.

In the afternoon, Larapinta takes me to the place she saw the dugong, past the second sandy embankment where she helped me when I got stung by the bluebottle, and up an incline. We stand there stiffly. I see boats on the clear water. I see the lazy shape of turtles. I don’t see a dugong.

‘Maybe she has gone home,’ she says. What a strange statement to come from something like her.

For a tiny moment when we are standing there and the breeze is lifting, it rains lightly. Just a thin veil over the view. I can hardly even feel the raindrops.

Soon it is dark and she pulls on my arm and asks if she can follow me home. I ask for a reason and she answers: ‘I want to be with you so we can do what is private.’ Then she leans close to my ear and utters ‘
private
’ again. My blush stops me from saying anything at all and I just walk numbly to my street and open both doors of my house.

We step inside and turn to each other and I realise she is the same height and it would not be difficult to kiss her.

I let her in my mouth. What will this experiment hold for her – what will she find in the flesh of my tongue, the crest of my lips? What will I discover in this uncharted experience? How much of what it means to be human will sway deep in my mind like a ship. I see her eyes are open, those green unhuman eyes, watching, looking at me, but not. Her mouth is alive. I suck on her bottom lip, surrender my teeth. She makes a noise that I could only interpret as arousal but in the weeks I’ve known her I’ve never heard her display in utterance. To feel she is human now is a lie, I must be with who she is. I feel her mind crackle on mine as our foreheads touch, I feel what is between her eyes. We lie down on the bed and she takes off my boots. Her hands are my body temperature. We embrace each other, cradle the warmth between us.

Her shoulder connects, her arm loops into mine. I feel the weight of my own arousal, the humming in my breast. She doesn’t tire, her breathing remains steady. In the dark of the room, her shadow enclosed into mine, she could be anything.

While we rest I contemplate telling her this is my first time in quite a while. To try and explain the reason why my knees shook, why there were tears of confusion on my face. I struggle to get the words out and wait for her reply.

‘Everything is new for me,’ she says. ‘I am renewal.’

Surprised by her response, I look at her.

‘I was made to adapt,’ she says.

‘Adapt? Can you adapt to love?’

‘I already have,’ she says. She shows me her flowers, one on each fingertip of her right hand. Red, with a bit of yellow. No more than a millimetre.

I’ve had bosses like him before. Authorial, edgy, say what they think without worrying about criticism.

I’ve mostly stayed out of their way.

Milligan doesn’t micro-manage me, but there is an expectancy that I go to see him every day, smile and say hello, and nod politely while he rants about the budget and reports. Milligan tells me some nasty truths about the Gov, and the more switched-on I become, the more I am uncomfortable. I realise how naive I was before coming here.

When he talks about the sandplants he sometimes refers to them as ‘weeds’: ‘How you handling the weeds?’ he says.

I don’t say much.

‘One week, you got left. You can go home if you’re pussy.’

‘Excuse me?’ I say.

He laughs.

I walked down George Street today. There was some big protest going on outside parliament house. Lots of Murris around. Stupidly, I looked for my uncle in the crowd. I got closer and stood in the background, watching the group of protesters move back and forth like chess pieces, not getting too close to the police watching from the bays.

There were whole families and an even mix of men and women. Mostly in black T-shirts.

One sign facing me said,
The cultural displacement continues!

I looked up at the windows of the tall building. President Sparkle wouldn’t be here, she was never here. She would be in Sydney or on the other side of the world. So why were these people here now? Then I realised that today was the date. By an online ‘enrolment’, Aboriginal people could sign up to live on Australia2. The government would decide whether the individuals met the Confirmation criteria, and assign them a block of land.

It had come up so many times in the office, but I was used to hearing it from the other end, the guvvie buzzwords and contractions.

What I was feeling from the crowd was so …
raw
that I felt my shoulders pull together and my stomach drop.

As much as the government thought they did, as much as Sparkle thought they did, these people didn’t want to live in this new ‘country’. They didn’t want Australia2. I wanted to go up to them, introduce myself, feel their feeling. Tell them I’m Murri, too, even though I don’t really look it.

I did end up talking to someone, a man who reminded me of my uncle, though he would be a decade younger.

‘You’re Marvin’s daughter, aren’t you?’ he said, coming alongside my shoulder.

‘Yes, how do you know?’ I said.

‘I used to know your dad quite well, and he would bring you along to barbecues and things.’ He changed his stance to greet me. ‘I’m Hugo.’

Hugh Ngo. The artist. He must have seen my half-look of recognition because he said, ‘Your dad and I, and your uncles and a few others, we were all at Yarapi for a while. Your dad was the best, I really think so. His work was admired on a global scale.’

I felt that nervousness, that reluctance I felt when someone spoke about my dad and his art. I had made a decision as a teenager that I didn’t want anything to do with the crowd, the painters, the appraisers, the gallery workers. I didn’t bother with it. What did it matter, Dad was gone.

‘When we lost your dad, it shocked a lot of us into action. We had to stop their control of our art.’

‘But you haven’t,’ I blurted. ‘It’s still the same.’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t make art for galleries. Or for money. I make art that speaks the truth.’

I’m out on the boat. It is 6 a.m. Early. I keep checking my watch. My hair is still wet at the ends from my morning shower. I’m not stopping at the smaller islands; I am powering onward.

By now I’m good at steering the boat. I wouldn’t have done this a few weeks ago, but now I’m confident. Yesterday, while I was in the city, I looked at maps in the library. I found the reference desk and asked them where their map collection was. I found a map of the Moreton Bay islands, and located Ki. I did the calculations to figure out how I would navigate there. I was used to making short and direct journeys. To get to Ki involved dribbling through a maze of sandbanks and little islands like the ones the plantpeople lived on. Then a long stretch out, which I was most worried about.

I don’t pass any other boats. When I do see Ki, I’m struck by how big it is. I know it is almost as big as Russell, but it’s more of a thin shape. Approaching the evacuated island, I slow the boat and find a little groove. There is a security guard there. Pointing with my chin, I show him the pass around my neck. He gives me a half-look and accepts with his eyes. I get out of the boat and suddenly feel exposed. Security everywhere, strolling lines like wolves in uniforms.

I make my way up a small hill and reach the treeline. It is a strange feeling. Other people may see the she-oaks and the sandy-coloured boulder with the skink on it. They might notice the air as quiet and crisp and the female magpie hopping on the grass, but I see something else, I feel something else.

I walk on. There is a light on in one of the houses across the park and I think about the house my dad used to live in, then further back to when it wasn’t a house, when the old people used to walk here bare-footed. I even take off my shoes and find a dark place under the shade of a wattle tree where I don’t think the workers will hear me, and I shout – a brisk guttural bark – cut off, because I pull back when I think about them finding me.