Nona and Me (24 page)

He says, “Of course, you can stay inside if you want –”

“This is fine.” I suddenly feel exhausted. “I might have a rest.”

“Is there anything I can get you?”

“I'm right.”

Dad looks like he's about to say more, but he closes his mouth and takes a step back towards the house. “I'll be around if you need me.”

He heads inside. I crawl into the tent and lie down. It feels like an oven. I don't know if I sleep or pass out. Whatever it is, it's sweaty and dreamless.

*

I feel like I have been clubbed over the head. I can hardly move. My body is on fire. I force myself to sit up in the tent and notice that Dad has left some cool water near my feet. At least, it used to be cool, now it's lukewarm. I gratefully take a sip and wipe my face on my damp T-shirt.

Outside, I can hear voices singing what sounds like gospel songs. I wonder if I'm hallucinating. I crawl out of my small oven and stand up. Dizziness hits me, then passes. The singing peters out. I look across the yard and see four Yolŋu women and a straggle of kids watching me from the shade of a tree. They smile shyly, but don't say anything. I take a step towards them as my mind grasps for the words.

I manage,
“Nhämirri nhe?”
How are you? Then I revert to English. “I'm Rosie, Pete's daughter. You know the teacher? He lives here.”

They nod and smile amidst a flurry of words I don't understand. I catch the word
ŋatha
– food – and realise I am hungry.

The lady closest to me indicates the little girl on her lap. “This is Nyiknyik, small mouse. She's your
ŋama
l
a
, your little mother. She'll take you down to the beach, look for mud mussels and crabs.”

Nyiknyik stands with a shy smile. Her hair is cut short and curls around her face.

I hesitate. “Have you seen my dad?”

“He's
ŋorra gurra
.” When she sees I don't understand, she explains, “Having a rest. You go. We'll tell him.”

I quickly walk back to my tent, grab the bottle of water and follow Nyiknyik down to the beach. It's a pretty arc of white sand with a small estuary and mangroves to one side. Ideal croc territory. The other kids follow us in a ragtag procession. I ask their names as we go. I start to remember basic phrases in Yolŋu Matha
. “Yol nhe yäku?”
What's your name?

Muthimuthi, Dje
t
and Bandawi help me look for mud mussels near the mangroves. It's low tide and the mudflats are exposed. I remember doing this with Nona, competing to see who could find the most. Today, we pile them into a communal Woolworths bag. Nyiknyik comes back with a crab she's found somewhere deeper in the tangle of roots and branches. She flashes me a wide, white-toothed smile.

I slap at my legs and ankles, feeling something biting. Dje
t
laughs. “
Yakaay! Mintjirri.
Sandflies.”

The kids don't seem to be affected, but I'm getting massacred so I retreat. I sit in the dappled shade of what they tell me is a
l
uŋiny
tree. The sun is lower now. I realise hours must've passed. Whole hours without thinking about Nick. It's a welcome relief.

Bandawi comes back and starts to make a small fire. The others tumble out of the mangroves and roast our haul amongst the flames. They hand me things to eat, telling me what they're called. Mud mussels, oysters and crab.

Dhän'pala. Maypal. Djinydjalma
.

The flavours explode in my mouth, transporting me back to a time when I ate these every other day, to the point that I'd gone to Sydney with Mum and insisted on ordering oysters, then refused to eat them because they weren't milky enough, not fresh from the rocks.

I repeat the words back to them and consign them to memory.

Dhän'pala. Maypal. Djinydjalma.

I chant them over and over, imprinting them on my brain.

This time I won't forget.

*

Dinner is fresh fish cooked over a campfire. The kids and ladies eat with us too. A few Yolŋu boys join us, their dark, laughing faces illuminated by the flames. They joke around with Dad, sometimes in English, mostly in Yolŋu Matha. They clearly like him. He fits here. I watch silently, taking it all in.

Once the food is gone, the boys drift away, and the ladies and kids start singing a gospel song, the same one I heard this morning.

I help Dad carry some cups and plates inside. I wash them and he dries up. Dad looks over at me and smiles. A peace has been made, but it's still tentative between us.

I make an effort. “Are those boys related to Muthali too?”

“I think everyone's related down here. One way or another.”

“Do they live in this house?”

“No, they're students. It's just me and Muthali and her sisters who live here – the ladies you met this morning? Them and their kids – the ones who took you to the beach.”

I'm curious. “Doesn't it bother you, having all these people coming and going?”

He shrugs. “Everyone shares everything here. It's
gurru
t
u
– you know, kinship. The best and worst thing about Yolŋu life. You can always ask for things, but you're always being asked for them too. It drove your mum crazy when we first moved to Yirrkala.”

I look up at him, curious. He hardly ever talks about Mum.

“I was constantly loaning things out or giving things away – money, lifts, kitchen utensils. She'd be cooking dinner and I'd hear this ‘Pete! Where's the small sharp knife?'”

“She used to cook?”

Dad laughs. “Don't tell her I said this, but she was never very good. I did most of the cooking, but she still tried to do dinner every now and then, so I didn't feel like a neglected husband.”

I smile in recognition. “That's exactly what she says when she sews me dresses. Except it's ‘neglected only child'.”

Dad smiles too. I feel warm in the glow of our shared history. I was only seven when he left. I don't have many memories of the three of us together, but now I realise our memories are linked across time and space by my mother.

Dad says, “She's a good woman, your mum.”

I force myself to ask. “Why'd you leave us?”

He looks at me in surprise. “Your mum asked me to move out.”

I'm stunned. I'd always assumed it was the other way around. “Why?”

He knows he owes it to me to be honest, and forces himself to meet the question head on. “When I think back now, I see there were hundreds of reasons. I knew and loved this place. She was from Sydney. It took a while to adjust. Me being away teaching every week probably didn't help. I knew she felt isolated but I didn't really understand. I blamed her for being negative, for not making the most of it here. We found out later she had post-natal depression. If it wasn't for Guḻwirri and Rripipi …” He shakes his head. “They helped her through the worst of it. Made sure she was never alone.”

*

I spend my days with the kids. We collect bush foods and berries. We go fishing, and hunt with spears for stingrays in the shallows. Knee deep in water, I'm nervous at first. “Are you sure this is safe? Aren't there crocodiles in here?”

Nyiknyik smiles, unconcerned. “We've got Tiger.”

Tiger is a ratty little camp dog, who the kids adore.

“If
bäru
come, he take Tiger.” The thought of Tiger being devoured doesn't seem to bother her. She shrugs. “Anyway,
bäru
don't live here. They live over there.”

She waves towards an inlet just around a sandy corner. I feel a bit safer, but not much.

I let my hair get greasy. My legs are covered in bites – fleas, sandflies and mosquitos. At night, I scratch in my sleep. But I don't care. I feel alive and free. I feel like a kid again. The only thing missing is Nona. I think about her a lot. I wonder when I'll see her again, and what she'll remember most: dancing the
buŋgul
together, or my words at the school. They are seared into my memory. I'm sure they're etched into hers.
The whole sister thing, it doesn't mean anything … I don't even know her anymore.

Dad is happy I have company during the days. It's school holidays, but he always seems to be busy. There's someone to drive here or there, or something to fix, or someone to talk to about school or politics. I don't mind. I know I'll see him in the quiet of evening. That's when we talk. Our conversations span generations and cultures.

He tells me what Yirrkala was like when he was growing up. There was a market garden on the oval, and people lived in humpies on the beach. They grew sugar cane and peanuts where the mine is now. People had to work and send their kids to school for rations. He tells me how confused it made him feel. On one side, he had Grandpa and Nan trying to “let the natives maintain their language and culture”. Yolŋu Matha wasn't allowed in the classroom, but beyond the desk it was fine. Unlike other missionaries, my grandparents even learned to speak it. But on the other side, he had his
wäwa
, Nona's dad. Bolu hated school, even from a young age, and said he “felt like he was being taught to live like a white man”. Dad was caught between two worlds. He escaped to boarding school and university, where he studied teaching, but the red dirt was in his veins.

“I couldn't wait to get back here. I convinced your mum to come too. It's such a great life for kids here. I loved seeing you and Nona grow up together …”

“Yeah?”

“You were inseparable. Like me and Nona's dad when we were small. We were always at each other's houses or out bush together, hunting and mucking around.”

“Did you stay close?”

“Not as teenagers. I went away for most of high school. He stayed here. When I came back to visit he was drinking, smoking pot. It was only as adults that we found a common ground again. Once we both had kids. And then I lost him all over again, for good …”

There are tears in his voice and in the corners of his eyes.

Maybe everyone who grows up here has their Nona.

*

It is my last night in Yilpara. The campfire is a smash of burning embers and our stomachs are full of stingray and roast potatoes. I sit next to Dad under the wide open sky. He picks gentle melodies on his guitar; they float from us out into the ether. The fading evening light makes the sand glow in pale pinks and mauves. A translucent moon hangs low, kissing the ocean. Along the beach, I can see the glint of other fires, and huddles of families cooking whatever they caught that day.

I lean back on my elbows. “I can see why you like it here.”

Dad puts his guitar down. “Yeah? What do you like about it?”

“You can forget the world exists. When you're here, it's all there is. You're just … being.”

I know Dad understands.

I ask, “Think you'll stay here forever?”

“Maybe.”

I search for the words. “Dad … how do you know you're doing the right thing?”

He sounds surprised. “I don't.”

“But you always seem so sure …”

I'm thinking of Nick, of course. It's a bad habit that's hard to quit. Sometimes a few hours pass, then a memory slaps me across the face. Or my thoughts drift back to his grin, his eyes, his laugh. I miss that Nick. I miss him so much it hurts.

I tune back in as Dad says, “I don't
feel
sure. Some days I wake up and think we should all just leave. All the Ŋäpaki. Just get out of here and leave the Yolŋu to sort things out. But I know, realistically, that's never going to happen. So I stay and I teach even though I'm full of questions … Hell, sometimes I think even me teaching English is damaging the culture. But I don't have any easy answers, Rosie. All I know is the answer is not to do nothing …”

I wonder if that's where I went wrong. If I'd done something, said something, earlier, would Nick and I still be together? Would Nona and I still be friends? I realise I've been paralysed by indecision and fear.

We sit in silence. He is completely at ease with it. He's been living and working with Yolŋu people for almost twenty years now. I suppose it makes sense that he's taken on some of their ways. I gaze into the embers until their orange glow is imprinted on my eyeballs. Brightness dances across the darkness wherever I look.

Eventually, he says, “I hope you'll come down again and meet Muthali.”

“I'd like that.”

Dad looks relieved.

We look up at the stars.

He points out the Milky Way and the Southern Cross. I think of Nick and his tattoo, and Nona and her unborn baby.

I see the red blink of a plane flying over.

*

I wake before sunrise and walk down to the beach. It stretches out in front of me, a gleaming white curve of sand. The ocean is still and quiet. Deep marine blue. I walk just below the dunes. My footprints leave a solitary track.

In the distance, I can see three black figures walking along the water's edge. They have spears in hand, and a small white dog trails behind them. One of the guys has a familiar strut. As they get closer, I see it is Jimmy. I don't know the other two. They are all just wearing shorts. No shirts. Their smooth black muscles ripple in the soft light of early morning.

As they approach, Jimmy gives me a nod. I remember Dad telling me he uses the name Batjula now, so I use it and he smiles. He says something to the other guys that includes my name, Mätjala, and the word
yapa.
The guys nod hello and keep walking. They're intent on their fishing, but Jimmy walks up the beach and plants his spear in the sand next to me. He squats down, looking out at the ocean. “Dolphins out there this morning.”

“Yeah?”

“Milkie was playing with 'em. Swimming out and diving.”

He indicates the little white dog, who has taken a grateful seat beside him. I smile, using the excuse to look at Jimmy's face, his eyes. They seem clear. Focused. Healthy.