Swallow the Air (3 page)

From the head of the escarpment, I used to think that I could see the world. When I was younger, when Mum was still here, I'd ride up to the quarry or the old miners' trails, always with secrets. I'd push through the thick scrub faces, where in the ferns I'd hide. And the ferns would hide too, or try to. Their feather prongs always peeking through burnt-out car remains and the o-rings of washing machines.

It was always wet up there, always a cloudy place in the mountains. The middling trees would gather last night's sea breeze in their canopy, away from the sun, letting cold dewdrops fall on passers-by and soft winds. Slicking sweaty skin and sleeking hair strands against my face.

That summer, just after Mum left, the fires started. Every year they got worse. It stopped being so wet, the dampness fell away from the soil,
and up until Christmas the whole coast would shift into a furnace of dry salt and smoke.

The year I was fourteen the bushfires would not be packed away in manholes and hall cupboards with the Christmas tinsel; they stayed on right through January and into school's first term. The nor-easterlies drove the red ginger skies to the wall of the coast road, and soon the entire national park that kept outer Sydney from our coastal town was left a charred break-wall, a warring deaf-black distance.

On the news it showed birds falling from the skies; they'd hit the pillows of smoke and drop to the earth like little soft bombs. Ash dropped from the sky too. All over Wollongong fragile cinder flakes stained hung out linen and car bonnets and drifted into the southerly swell. The ocean kept the sooty snow afloat and at night the smoke kept the fires lit up, so that day and night blended into each other, so that everything appeared both carbon black and hazy yellow or a constant humming orange.

At the end of January a postcard arrived, redirected from our old house down the road, to Aunty's. It lay in the shade of the flip top
metal letterbox, the handwriting side showing, addressed to us Gibsons, our family name.
Sorry it's been a long time.

Sorry.

The postcard was late, too late for Mum. The ink had been wet before, its dotted
i'
s and stroked
t'
s seeped across the boundary.
From Dad,
from Dad.

Sorry.

From Dad.

I walked my bike out from the side gate, slid my hand into the letterbox and tucked the postcard into the side of my shorts, so that the glossy cardboard stuck to my fleshy hip. And then pedalled as fast as the heat would let me to the quarry, at the base of the escarpment.

At the entrance to the miners' track, beside the strangling figs and purple lantana, I left my bike and headed up by foot. The ground was dry, as it had been for so long. The track was swept with a thick cover of brittle, banana-shaped leaves from the gums, and sun-burnt palm spines, that crisscrossed their way up the sloping dirt. The smell of fire still rose, even from so far away; it belonged here with the other odours of dust and mining and sweet banksia blossoms.

In the small clearing, where I'd hide shaded by umbrellas of grass trees and tree ferns I took the softest ground as a seat. It was dry there too. When it was damp and you'd sit up there for a while, you'd be sure to find a leech on one of your ankles or sucking the blood from between your toes. Mum used to say that these parts are famous for their leeches, or used to be anyway. She said that the old people used to trade them, big juicy fat ones, they'd use for medicine. She said that the people from this part are called the Dtharawahl people, and dtharawahl means valley, a perfect wet breeding ground for leeches. It is their land, Mum would say, so we have to help look after it for them in exchange for our staying here. Be respectful, she'd say.

But there were no leeches anymore; they left when Mum left – traded for the bushfire's arrival. Maybe they were hiding deep in the soil where it was still a bit wet, waiting for the rain to come and moisten the hard crust, waiting for the rain to make mud so they could slither out for food. I imagined all the other animals that survived the fires would've been hiding too, waiting for the right time to come out and start again.

Maybe Dad had done the same. Maybe he needed to hide away until now, until he could come back. I wondered if he'd come back.

The shiny photograph on the postcard was of a pretty display, a pile of orange mangoes, strawberry hibiscus framing them. There was another photo next to the first, of palms between rows of huge thick-crested trees, which leaked their branches into the slender grasses below. Against one of the trees was a ladder; a canvas picking bag was slung off a rung where a man was standing. It wasn't Dad; the man had a big wad of blonde hair and was clutching a mango, as if to pick it.

I didn't know it then, but the man would no longer be there and the mangoes would've all been packed and sent away in dusty oversized trucks. They would all be bought and eaten, the skin and seed rotted, the yellow dew leather
chewed through by worms. Fruit flies would have flown to new flesh. And the dark finger leaves would've grown over in pink wax scale, the hibiscus turned black and the sweating fragrance of caustic sap and sugar long been buried with the season.

But to me, then, under the thick mangle of brown branches that pleaded for rain in the desperate dry air, he might as well have been right there. He could just as well be perched on the other side of the escarpment, or down at our old house. I'm five years old and we're eating powdery watermelon, spitting black pips with a mouthful of giggles. Or I'm about six, following his forearms, his fingers as he shows us how to cast the hand line off the beach, swinging the hook and sinker, his aim perfect. How to pull up the slack of the nylon line, gently. His arms are strong and pale, I remember, as I follow them out to the breakers. Watching the bream and whiting surf the waves in huge schools like dolphins. Before the line would take and he'd reel in a catch. I'm six still and I'm watching his bare limbs heaving a shovel in the backyard, the sound of the blade hitting the damp clay, the smell of the exposed
soil, weekend cut grass and his sweaty back moving like the tide. I can still see his fingers moving unconsciously as they roll a smoke, flicking the lighter and drawing back on the cigarette. The muddled smells of White Ox tobacco and yellow Palmolive Gold soap on his hands.

He might as well have never left. I wondered how I could ever have thought he did, how I could've allowed the memory of my father to pass me by, to cease existing.

And the memories all came back then, bit by bit, shiny little bubbles, quick, sharp. Just before they spit open and disappear again, clear.

No one taught Billy how to fight. Mum had once said to me that he just had to; he already knew before he was born that he had no other choice. His heart was bleeding before the world had even got to him, before he could even swallow air, Mum had said.

She was just a young girl when her stomach started to swell like the full moon had gone and grown itself inside her. She was just a young girl when the doctors said that her little baby might die. That they would have to cut open his chest and patch the holes in his heart, that afterwards he might not live very long either. That little brown baby had two setbacks then, she thought.

Billy's dad ran away, he was the right skin for Mum too, but he wanted to play rock'n'roll instead, wanted to live in a swag or the back of a Kingswood, no place for a sick baby and a young mum.

A year later she found out that he had driven up to the Blue Mountains, outside of Sydney, that he'd rented a cabin at one of the villages along the ridge. That he'd woken one morning, the type of morning where clouds hustled into the side of the mountains, embedding themselves thick in the pines. Letting each indent of the valley be filled with mist, those mornings where everything seems silent, a faint echo of a car or birdsong somewhere far off and empty. That he'd walked out to a lookout and jumped straight through the fog and into the sandstone base of a waterfall. That something must've been itching him bad.

But Mum still thought that boys needed their dads, needed to have men around to grow into. So she went and found herself another dad for Billy, a white fella. And a few years later I arrived. But Billy was still sick, he'd turn yellow soon as you looked away, dropping off, fainting, his heart too slow, or too fast. Those doctors never really did get it right. The stitching came away like loose shoelaces and his heart would be bleeding again, leaking inside his skinny little body.

When Billy could finally stand though, he refused to sit down. Mum knew then that he'd
be ok no matter what happened, that he was a fighter in his heart, even if it was his heart that was barely fighting.

One day at the beach when we were kids, I remember running my finger down the melted ridge of skin between his ribs. I asked him if it hurt but he said he couldn't remember. The scar felt slippery, I remember that. And then we never talked about it again. I never thought about it again either.

Not until the day Billy turned eighteen.

We were still there living with Aunty, though mostly she was either out or out of it. The booze had got a strong hold of her, her and her boyfriend Craig, and the bottle was what the house turned into, not a home any more than she had meant for it to be. Just a place of grog and fists. Craig had a rage, I hated him for hitting her. I asked Aunty why we didn't just go, but Aunty said he'd never remember the fights, that he'd have blackouts – and that he couldn't help it. Poor Aunty.

Every night it happened, I began to wake
before they'd even come home, my body waiting for the back door to fling open and bang against the wall, for them to be already at each other's throat, or laughing and chatting before a blue would start. I'd lie awake through the whole thing, my breathing so loud that I was sure that if they'd stop bashing into each other for a second, that through the walls they'd be able to hear the air passing fast and heavy in my throat.

But they didn't stop, they'd keep going until they were exhausted and one would plead with the other to have a drink, would say sorry and drag em to bed.

Night in and night out, on the other side of the walls that held our Aunty and some stranger captive: two puppets of booze trialled their messy, confused violence. But this night, it was Billy's eighteenth birthday and it'd be the last fight either of us would hear.

That afternoon Aunty had given Billy a silver flask. We sat around the kitchen table with a sponge cake and candles that I'd bought from the Vietnamese bakery. Singing happy birthday, the three of us, Craig in the lounge room. Aunty, sitting there smoking and sipping a cuppa, told Billy
to jump up and grab the blue plastic bag near the washing powder in the laundry. We giggled while Billy made this dumb look on his face with a bit of a smile as he went out to the laundry.

He came back to the kitchen with the bag and untied the crumpled, bow-eared handles at the top. He didn't drink grog but Aunty said it's a keepsake anyway. Billy liked it. She jumped up and grabbed it off him. ‘Here ya,' she said spinning the lid off the bourbon bottle and holding the flask over the sink. ‘Fill it up for when ya wanna have a drink one day, on your wedding night, boy!'

Billy's face went all red and he pulled a cheeky smile at his feet. She tightened the flask and grabbing the tea towel off the bench, smudged the case clean.

‘There!' she boasted. ‘Your mum'd be so proud of you, the both of you.'

Billy and I dropped our heads down. Aunty was gettin all tipsy and emotional. I didn't mind her like this so much.

‘Garn, get out. Go meet ya mates.' Aunty scoffed him off with the back of her hand and threw herself in front of the TV.

‘Ya wanna come?'

‘Me?'
I said.

‘Course, you dickhead – what are bros for?'

‘Where we going?' Big smile crept across my face.

‘Movies – my treat, but we're watchin
Terminator,
ya reckon ya can handle that?'

‘Yeah
yeah!'
I said, stirring.

At the cinemas Billy's mate Vardy and him went halves in my ticket. I was so stoked. I remember walking into the movie thinking,
yeah this is my brother, the best brother in the world.

After the movie we decided to walk home. Vardy started drinking the bourbon from Billy's flask. Then Billy drank some too. They took big gulpfuls and winced. Billy and Vardy started getting drunk and raving about the movie.

They would take turns at saying ‘I'll be back' in the Terminator's voice, jumping over front fences, tripping into people's yards, falling over wheelie bins and pot plants before running back to the footpath for us all to piss ourselves laughing. They'd take a swig, pass the flask to me then run into the distance.

I was laughing so much that I thought I'd have
a swig too, a little tight-lipped sip so that only a tiny bit passed my lips. I'd smelt it before, but the taste was bitter and antiseptic. My head whooshed dizzy and I belly laughed at the boys more and more with each sip.

It was so much fun. We said seeya to Vardy at the bottom of Paradise Parade and as we walked the street, he and Billy flung
I'll be back'
s over front yards and fence lines until we got to Aunty's, laughing our heads off still.

We cleared the back steps and into the kitchen. It was quiet except for the low murmur of Craig's voice and Aunty's faint whimpers. He had her black hair all tangled in his thick fingers fist, the red metal coil of the stove plate a few inches from her face.

It happened so fast. We'd never stepped between them. Billy pulled back Craig's arm, grabbing at its thickness. ‘Let her go, ya mongrel!'

Craig's fist freed itself from Aunty's head, flinging her downwards. His arm rose and hammered into Billy's chest. The thud was bottomless, booming against the stale kitchen.

That's when I remembered.

As Billy's mouth opened wide and sucked in
air from the pit of his stomach, his eyes dilated. He brought his open palm to his chest – the place where his heart lay beneath the skin. He tumbled backwards onto the linoleum, a dead weight.

The kitchen light swung slowly back and forth across his body. Billy's eyes were wide and searching the ceiling. My head whooshed more, I dizzied above him, too shocked to touch his weakness. Billy's hand was still against his chest as he grabbed Aunty's eyes with his own. His scream was from somewhere deep within. He bellowed, baring his teeth, yelling miles and miles of hatred upon her. It seemed like forever that the sound pelted out of him and up to her face.

He pushed himself off the floor and charged to the fibro wall, kicking his foot through the chalky plasterboard as we all looked on disbelieving.

‘Fuck this place, fuck you all! Fuck this shithole of a house, fuck this town, and fuck this life. Let's go May, ya comin? Fuck this for a home. I'm not comin back, May. Not ever. Let's go.'

He stood at the back doorway, his chest heaving adrenalin. My head fogged over, the alcohol no longer giggly, it shivered inside me, suffocating any normal judgement.

‘Let's go, May!'

Again and again he threw the words at my hands, hands incapable of taking hold of them and running. I could only stand and sway as he punched his fist into the back door and disappeared into the night. His screaming flung through the streets like
I'll be back'
s, but I knew he wouldn't.

When I walked up and down Paradise Parade, to Vardy's house, to the beach, away from the chaos of Aunty and Craig, away from everything we hated, as I walked the empty black streets, I realised Billy was really gone.

Billy and me were like shadows; we could merge into the walls without being noticed. We'd move on the same tides; when we were laughing we couldn't stop each other, when we were talking neither of us could get a word in, when we were fishing, being sad, or being silent, we were both empty cups. We were rarely angry, we rarely fought, and if we did it was only if I was annoying him, and even then he'd just chase me and kick me up the bum and it'd turn into us laughing together again.

We didn't talk about Mum or our dads or all
the booze and shit around us, we knew the world in the same way that we knew each other, in the quietness that we shared. It wasn't in our eyes, or our voices or what we said, it was just there, that understanding, that sameness – it slicked our pores, our skin. It was a feeling that you couldn't see, or smell or hear or touch; you only knew.

I thought I'd know where he'd be, up the bush, at Bulli Beach, thought I could track him down, thought he'd be where I'd go, the same. But I looked for days, weeks, months. He never came back to Aunty's, never for clothes or for a feed or to find me. He'd really gone.

And the more he wasn't there, the more I realised too, we were all gone.