Swallow the Air (9 page)

The river sleeps, nascent of limpid green, tree bones of spirit people, arms stretched out and screaming. And at their fingertips claws of blue bonnets, sulphur-crested cockatoos and the erratic dips and weaves of wild galahs, grapefruit pink and ghost grey splash the sky. And as the salt subsides, the green trickles over the riverbank from tree limbs, spilling colour into day's light, upside down. The water moves in tiptoes, and you could almost mistake it for a painting, staining only the top edge of the bank with its stirring: red orange ochre to cherry blood. This dust, this bleeding ash, is everywhere.

One of her arms rests at the small of her back, the other hangs at her empty hip. It waits until something moves, or for a word to jump at her finger. Issy points,
budyaan ... muraany ...
budyabudya.
Bird ... cockatoo ... butterfly. She laughs, eyes wide.
Bila,
river.

She tells me to follow for four days the left side of the river, only cross once at the
cuundabullen
– where the water shallows. I should cross to get onto the road, walk for a few hundred metres to get food, and then walk back to the river. I ask her how I will know that I'm there. She says there is a tourist sign, big blue and yellow one, of a knife and a plate and a fork, to show me. We laugh. She says I might die from starvation, but probably not. ‘Plenty of fish if you can catch em,' she adds. ‘You'll be all right, cook up a feed with those ciggies you got, make a little fire.'

She waves her hands together to create a pile of cigarettes in our talking. Here at the water, away from the blockade and the sad fire, she is light and spilling laughter at my foolishness. But under all the giggling we meet somewhere between my blazing stomach and the stars, and she looks into me with a gravity. I think of it as a shared stubbornness or some nature of knowing. It leaks from her, that once she too was lost.

She enfolds her lined hands again and places one palm on her chest and the other on her
waistband. ‘Listen.' The word overflows the bird noise and echoing doubt. ‘Nganhali ngalangganha bubay bargan.' She smiles and knots her hands again behind her. She shuffles her skinny legs toward the road. Turns back to me. ‘Bargan is boomerang,' she smiles again. ‘You'll be back.'

I close my eyes. When I open them she is gone.

And I begin. One foot in front of another and so on.

I remember what my mum had said to me once about worries. She said when we worry, when something is pulling us down, we should take a walk. A good walk, she said, a long walk. Rhythm tangles behind you, scurries up ahead, and somehow in between, something makes sense. One foot is your heart and one foot is your mind. Together, they can make your worries easy, clearer. ‘Just walk,' she'd say, ‘just gotta walk.'

I suppose in the end she couldn't find her feet.

And with the crying inside me, that I could not make out, of words or voice, I began to walk.

Listen,
Issy had said.

I listened. And the voices would come out,
emerging from button grasses, bark shavings and water. Mother. Brother. Anger. Fear. All soaked in sorrow. Intricate words like Joyce's photo tree of faces. Day doused them yellow, but night crawled the dark moons, hiding light. And answers.

Each day I asked the voices, why I'm here? What I'm doing?

They did not answer. But I kept asking anyway, to make sure that it was ok. Still they did not tell.

Hours edged by like the river reeds, drifting and poisonous. I caught an old slow carp with my jumper, tied at its end, swimming like an air balloon in the eddy. It was a crazy plan, but I was lucky. I longed for the beach where in the shallows we would always find pipis. I burnt the stupid fish and swore at the river that second night. I was so mad, not at the fish or the river or the lonely path I was prodding, but at that bickering in my head. The noisy silence, it itched my skin.

The next morning, dodging pipes that drank from the river to sprinklers, was the big tourist sign on the side of the bridge. There was the table setting, yellow on blue. CONDOBOLIN – THE LACHLAN VALLEY WAY.

I followed the edge of the empty highway to the little town and bought a hamburger, eating the last of the money with the hope of a family dinner. I knew my mother's mob would give me a feed, when I got there – to Euabalong – when I found them anyway. I dribbled beetroot and lettuce water down my forearms and onto the footpath, imagining these people. I imagined my mum would be there too, they'd all be there, around a fire, cooking goanna. I imagined them whispering the stories my mum had whispered years ago, singing with the firelight licking their head-dresses, matching my odd looking eyes with theirs. Peeling back my skin, my blood against theirs. Family. My people. My mob.

Yamakarra, I would say. I practised it as I walked the rest of the river.

Yamakarra, they would say.

The buckles of the seat belts stabbed into my hips from either side. We rocked against each other's hot brown skin, arms and shoulders colliding as the car bulleted through road ditches. The heat slashed open the tar, burning and thrashing at the Commodore's yellow bonnet, sending daggers of white light into our eyes. Choking, dirty ciggie smoke and ash swelled the back seat, where we rode. It carved out a queasy feeling in my hunger stomach. My feet scrambled atop, sliding empties on the floor that exhaled their stale beer smell.

‘Thanks for the ride,' I said as I stepped out onto the red dirt.

‘No worries.'

The mission is the outpost between two towns, Euabalong, where I'd come from and Lake Cargelligo, where they were going. When
I got from the river to Euabalong I asked at the general store where I'd find family. Go to the mission, they said, where the highway crossed. They'd know where your family is, they said.

From the side of the highway the land seemed lathed bare. I couldn't imagine anyone living there. I spun around a few times and dizzied over the starkness, a tiny arrow-shaped sign blinked in the distance, black on white. ‘Mission', it read.

I wandered over and looked down the rusty track to its petrol-fumed end. I should be used to it by now, walking, but hope was becoming weary. I could think only about food, my shadow stretched out like a rake along the track. When the dirt turned to bitumen houses began to line the emptiness of daylight. Sadness clawed into my skin for no reason I could see. Everything – houses, sealed road, gutter, sports oval – seemed normal. I supposed they rose up like the estate homes, from the flat bare ground, a hasty construction of identical walls, devoid of emotion, shuffled off to the new suburb like secrets in pockets. Not to make too much noise, not to draw too much attention, not to fuss.

So you have to look closer.

Bare red ground sweeps all distance. Little pockets of black-green trees remain still and burning. To the south an offshoot of the Lachlan is almost dried up. There are water tanks instead. Dead land. Crops seem more important than people, than rape. A small church flakes off its old salmon skin, revealing the ashen wood beneath. The windows have no shutters, some doorways have no doors, and every house is exactly the same, like someone's idea of fancy concentration camps. People spill in and out of their houses, trying to find some kind of un-itchy medium, trying to prise off the boundaries. Kids run the streets, owning them. The sports field looks more like a rodeo pit, the last slip of the green cricket pitch is beginning to brown, like everything else. It feels forgotten here, and if you can forget about a place so forgettable, so unassuming, then I imagine the people who live in it forget too. Forget that there exist places beyond the highway creases, forget that someone might care.

‘Hey! Excuse me! Young lady, get ere.'

He waves me over to his seat on the back porch. The old man is so black, the blackest skin I'd ever seen. He wears a worn-out cowboy shirt
and a big Akubra hat, black jeans, bare feet. The line of shade from the rooftop cuts off at his face. He points me over to sit on the other side, in the rest of the shade; a half case of throwdowns sits between us. He twists over so we face each other.

‘I sit half in the shade and half in the sun. That's because,' he pauses and raises a long finger to the sky, ‘if ya get too used to the shade ya don't ever want to get up. And I don't want to get used to anything, ha!'

He strikes his finger into the air, as if to burst a bubble and laughs. ‘My name is Graham, but I'm Uncle to ya young fellas.' We nod together. ‘What ya doin here anyway, young lady, not Christian are ya?'

‘Nah, I'm not Christian, why?'

‘Let us have a few more of these before I start on about all that, ha!'

He tosses his fist of VB in the air; it flips across the lawn, and rests against the fence. He cracks another.

‘So you from lake there or what?'

‘Nah, I just come from Sydney, Uncle.'

‘Oh, the big smoke? True? That's deadly girl, I
like it there, people so wired up, things to do. Not like dis place! What you come ere for then, all the way from city?'

‘For family, trying to find my family.'

‘What they name?'

‘Gibson.'

‘Mmm, I know some Gibsons in Cowra, bit far from here though. Gibson spose to be a big deadly mob, strong people you know! Where they spose to be?'

‘Euabalong, but there's none there, they said to come here.'

‘True, someone will know, maybe old Betty, but she's in town, she'll be back soon, we'll ask her, ok?'

I nod.

‘See that house there, that where she live, we see her come back, ok?'

I nod again. ‘Ok,' I say.

‘Betty's a good lady, she one of the only old ones here that knows what's what, she got trouble though, all her boys too much on the grog, and her husband too, too much grog and bustin each other up, ya know. It's no good, this entire place is gone, no spirit left here. Only bad spirits
come to wake em up, ya see em at the river there, three very tall dark men, so tall, with red eyes like desert peas. They come to wake people up, but you never look in the eyes, cos when you do, you become them. Bad spirit. Nobody go to the river no more. Got good and got bad, always two sides. Poor old people ere got round up ere from the tank, where lots of our people were killed from them sickness, that's these people, Wiradjuri and my people – Nygampaa. Back in '47 government made this place and shifted plenty of station blacks out ere, that's what they call us, station blacks. Bloody Catholics run the places, bloody run places into the ground. You know some of our people, they been taken into the church and them priests have their way, ya know bad spirit in them, and they took it out on the little fellas. Who's gunna speak up for em little fellas? Other people don't understand, when that bad spirit happens to family, it stays in the family, when we born we got all our past people's pain too. It doesn't just go away like they think it does.'

He paused his story, took the last of the throwdown into his mouth. ‘That's why so much drinkin, drinkin, drinkin. That's why so much anger, you
know? You musta see it in Sydney there; ya know what I'm talkin about. Well then these people never get to talk and it builds up inside em, it just want to get out and when it does it destroy em and they get locked up in the prisons with all that pain they gotta listen to, alone in they prisons, all the memories chokin em in they sleep. No one to talk about it, no one ever want to talk about it. And they die, kill em selves, then those governments just put another number, nother cross on they list. Lockin up bloody young fellas, why we have prisons? So they don't have to think about it, about people's problems, we don't have to do anything bout it. They still tryin to do it, kill off us fellas, that always been they plan, now they do it quiet, crush em, slow. Ya see the problem is, us fellas still seen as second-rate person, still treated like they don't matter. Bloody millennium come and gone and they still can't treat our people right. We seen forty bloody millenniums, our people, and they government give us credit for that? Only when it suits them, when they gotta show all them tourists. This country, this government and them bad churches, they all one evil, ya know, they all workin with each other. You probably sitting ere thinkin I'm
just crazy old jackeroo, don't know what I'm talkin bout! You know what, maybe I don't know what I'm talkin bout, I sure as hell would like someone to tell me I'm wrong. I wish someone would just tell me I'm wrong.

‘See dat, there Betty comin, go an catch her.'

He points across the road at the car pulling in to the driveway.

I jump up and grab my bag. ‘Thank you, Uncle.'

‘That's ok, girl, go on, go ask for your family, ya find em.'

I turn and start running across the lawn, ‘Hey, young lady, take your hat off for old Betty, ok?'

‘Ok.'

I run across to the cement drive and slow down as I near the people grabbing groceries from the car boot. An older woman notices me. I know it's Betty. I take off my hat. We say hello as we nod to each other.

‘My name is May Gibson; I'm looking for some of my family, the Gibsons?'

Betty cradles the bag of packet food between us as the younger men slink past carrying slabs of
beer under their arms. ‘Gibson. You know Lake Cargelligo?'

‘No.'

She turns to the skinny woman in the car, telling her the street name. The woman nods.

‘My daughter Jo, she take you there, the only Gibsons left I reckon, love. Quick jump in!'

The engine kicks over and Betty waves to us both, a trying smile on her face and soft eyes that turn away as we leave. Seemed all so perfect, so right.

The house is white. It sits on the square of ruby sand and clipped grass, a few metres back from the short fishnet fence and the camellia bed. A narrow path creases from the gate to the peppermint door, which is shaded by a candy stripe awning. The street smells of mothballs and farming. This, they say, is the Gibson house, the only Gibsons left.

My knuckles rub at the mesh of the screen door. I know I should knock, but my hand is scared. This is not how it is supposed to be.

Inside the house is quiet. A dog is barking from one of the yards. I move my fist across to the doorframe. I knock. A woman comes to the doorway; she has a glass in her hand, lemon lime, a cigarette cropped from her finger's edge.

‘Hello there?'

‘Hello, I'm looking for the Gibsons.'

‘Yes, that's me, me and my husband, who are you, love?'

‘May Gibson.'

‘Hold on, I'll get the keys.'

She comes back to the screen, snips the lock, tumbling the keys, and opens the sketched wire onto our difference.

We see our difference.

‘Percy. Percy love, come here.' Her eyes stray over her shoulder. ‘Hold on a minute.'

She disappears and I want to get out of there.

It's too late; he is here under the candy aluminium awning. The spitting image of Mum. All skin and hard face.

‘Who are your parents?'

‘June Gibson's my mum.'

‘June, little June, last time I saw June, she would have been this tall.' He points a cigarette to her height above the ground.

‘Come in, come in ... May isn't it?'

‘Yep.'

‘Dotty, Dotty, this is May, my ... well I suppose, well I don't know who you'd be to me ... June's mother was my aunt, so spose you're my cousin too or something.'

He scratches his head, dropping ash onto the thick milky carpet as he lowers his cigarette out toward the chair. ‘Sit, sit. You want some cordial, May?'

‘Yeah, thanks.'

‘Well, little June, hey, ahh jeez ... where is she now?'

‘She's gone ... I mean, she's dead.'

‘Ahh shit, how long.'

‘Six years.'

‘It's funny when you said gone I thought ya meant walkin, you know travellin, cos her mother, Alice, your grandmother, my aunty, she was a gypsy, all your Gibson family, lots of gypsies.'

‘Spose you're gypsy too, ha?'He looks at my small backpack and down at my feet. His lip crawls cruelly. ‘What d'ya want anyway love, ya come here for money, ha? Like your grandmother?'

‘No.'

‘No? Well what ya come here for? Where'd ya come from anyway?' His voice is louder and intruding.

‘Wollongong, sort of. I came here, well I don't know really, not for friggin money though!'

‘Gotta a bit cheek too, ha?'

‘I'm not the person you're lookin at me like, I'm not a criminal.'

‘Never said you were, love. Not for money, ha? I believe ya. Spit it out then, I got golf in a minute.'

‘Just wanted to know about my family, you know, the Gibsons, where they come from and stuff. My mum, she told me loads of stories and stuff and I just was expecting to find, I dunno, some family or something...'

‘Stories, ha! What do you want to know? Where ya get ya skin from, ya tribal name, ya totem, ya star chart, the meaning of the world? Thought us Gibsons'd give ya the answers, ha!'

I back toward the door.

‘Nah nah, look here.' He waves me back to sit. ‘Look.'

He balances the meeting out on his knees, asking his hands for words.

I interrupt the silence. ‘It's all right, I'll just go, sorry.'

‘Nah nah, listen, sit down.'

‘Your grandmother she left this place, went looking for something, some kind of meaning, something that wasn't the mission, or the tank, or
the farming or something. She came back here once, thirty years later, my father, her brother, didn't even recognise her at first, standing on the porch with a bunch of kids hanging off her hands. Your mother, she was one of them. She wanted money. I remember she was desperate, sad. Some drover, white fella, name of Jack or something or other had messed her around. We gave her some money, and a feed and a bed. And then she took the kids with her and left. That was it.'

My thoughts drifted off to Mum, when she was going crazy, telling us about a man called Jack, I remember she used to say he was the first white man to destroy us. ‘Not the last,' she would say, stuck on the words. ‘Not the last.'

I wanted to be free of them – I wanted pride instead.

‘What about like, growing up here, like learning from your old people and stuff?'

‘You're just like your grandmother, you know that? But she knew it. She died of hope, you know that? The thing is, we weren't allowed to be what you're looking for, and we weren't told what was right, we weren't taught by anyone. There is a big missing hole between this place and the
place you're looking for. That place, that people, that something you're looking for. It's gone. It was taken away. We weren't told, love;
we weren't allowed to be Aboriginal.

‘I got a good life now.' He nods at the TV, hiding welled eyes, and then at the furniture, the thick carpet, Dotty sitting at the table, smoking. ‘Stories, ha! Your mother probably read em from books, plenty of books if ya want to learn.' He shakes his head at his knees, huffs and lifts himself off the armchair. He makes a point of looking at his wristwatch. ‘I got to go to golf now, nice to meet you, May. Dotty will make you something to eat if you want.'

I do not cry, my eyes are hardened, like honeycomb, like toffee. Brittle, crumbling sugar. He puts his hand out toward me; we shake hands, a pact that I won't be here digging up his past when he gets back.

And I'm not.

The highway breeze is thick and hot from the truck's cab. Earth spins up in little tornadoes over bare grazing fields, clouds tumble from
the east into purple storm, the birds leave for cover, their wings gracing wind. And day leads night, headlights stretch over the glass, and pass. Eventually I will be there. At the shoreline, we need to talk.

And it all makes sense to me now. Issy's drawing in the sand, boundaries between the land and the water,
us,
we come from the sky and the earth and we go back to the sky and the earth, bone and fluid. This land
is
belonging, all of it for all of us. This river is that ocean, these clouds are that lake, these tears are not only my own. They belong to the whales, to Joyce; they belong to Charlie, to Gary, to Johnny, to Issy, to Percy, to Billy, to Aunty, to my nannas, to their nannas, to their great nannas' neighbours. They belong to the spirits. To people I will never even know. I give them to my mother.

The driver says he's going for a shower and said we'll be back on the road straight after. He pulls the big trailer into the truckstop. I swing down out of the cab and close the door above my head. In the service station I walk the chip aisles, bringing back flashes of Cheapa Petrol and then of the Block – of that big place of family, Joyce, Johnny, everyone.

I scan the pretty white faces on the magazine covers, and down to the stacks of newspapers that I'd never read. And then, it was as if my world slipped through the hands I'd only just found. The newspaper broke the news, as hard and as real as it needed to be. BOY, 16, DIES IN POLICE CHASE. The photo of Johnny was magic, one of old Joyce's off the wall. He had the biggest grin spilling across his face, his Wu-Tang hat hiding all the beautiful dreaming in his head.

I couldn't cry for Johnny now. I'd only be crying for the harsh words that I'd said when I left. He died at least with that perfect dream, that perfect paradise, that perfect Thursday Island in his mind. He could go fishing now, cruising the strait, like Mungi, I thought –
peacefully forever,
over our crumbling skin, through this shifting water.