CHAPTER 42
She was Australia.
Leonora pressed her forehead to the hot window of the train car, her eyes racing with the speeding land. Endless miles of red earth blurred along the tracks, stretched off to the edge of the world, and her gaze fell into its rusted hue and the white heat that shimmered above it—the land of her birth.
She was Australia. Its air was her air, its cells her own.
Leonora sat on the train as a woman. She returned to this flowing land, both a dead and living land, a named woman—branded a Fairfield, then a Harrington: names of wealth that trailed and spoke of her and said she was not a daughter of Australia but of a pedigree. But she knew.
A month ago, America waved from the deck of the steamer and sent kisses from her shores, wished her well toward the other land, just as an aunt says good-bye and gently pushes a child to her mother. After weeks and weeks upon that ship, where the wind shifted and called to her, Australia grew from the very sea, rose to greet her with sheer cliff walls and ocean pinnacles that had not changed a stone but waited patiently for her return. And secretively, she unfolded the creases, smoothed out the edges of her wrinkled Australia, but she did not breathe—not yet.
Southern Cross. Kalgoorlie. Menzies. Kookynie. The towns swung past. The train stopped at each, the firebox exhaling in rest before eating coal and chugging forward again. And then they stopped. Alex took her elbow and led her through a hard, smoking town with hard, smoking men and led her to the car. Australia slowed now and drifted and heated the car on an unshaded journey upon a lone road.
The land cut in two with a wiry fence, a fissure that extended as far as the eye’s gaze could follow. Every mile, a gate stopped them. Alex let the car idle as he undid the lock, drove ahead, shut the gate and moved on through the entrances shielding one empty acre from the next.
And there it was. Wanjarri Downs. The house rose from the dirt, its yellow brick mellow and baking against the sun. Alex opened her door and put his arm around her waist, gazed at the house. “What do you think?”
But there were no words. This land was her home, her home! Here she could begin anew, breathe life into this house, raise a family, create new memories that would wipe away the nightmares. Life was new again and she was grateful. She reached for Alex, hugged him and felt his smile in her hair. She would forget about the past, erase any history before this moment. She would try to love him. He had brought her back to Australia and she could forgive him for the scars. She would be a good wife. Her soul bloomed. The breath was coming, filled her lungs and wanted to erupt as tears, but it was still not time.
Alex shuttled her through the house, showed her the rooms, opened up the French doors so the curtains billowed upon the hot breeze. He chatted about the land, about the mine, but her ears were dull to the words and only heard the sounds—the sound of his voice, the swish of drapes as they embraced the window frames, the echo of her and Alex’s footsteps on new hardwood and the cackle of nearly a million birds from outside.
She was Australia.
The day’s light waned. Alex took leave to his office. Leonora stepped to the verandah where the setting sun met with a fiery orange eye. Her body moved now without her will, her thoughts just a passenger. She watched her feet, told them to walk when they wanted to run. The dirt below her soles was red and knew her feet, dusted and coated her high heels. The birds laughed, asked in shouts and shrieks where she had been.
Leonora headed to the trees, buried herself in a cluster of ghost gums, so closely knit that their bony boughs intertwined and latticed. And she pulled herself up into their limbs, gathered her silk dress around her legs and touched the smooth peeling bark with her fingertips, sank her cheek to the white skin. She hung to the boughs, peered with the wide eyes of a chuditch into the growing dark. Kangaroos grew from the shadows, seemed to pop up from the very spot they stood and dotted the plain with raised paws and twitching ears. Her body shook then. Her chest opened. She clung to the tree limbs and cried into its creases like an infant to a mother’s breast.
And she grew from Australia again and she was made of Australia again. And she was here under the deep sky, stained by its earth and greeted by bloated flies. And Australia broke her heart with its grace, that it had not forgotten her just as she had never forgotten it. Her lungs broke with sobs and the air broke in and she breathed.
She was home.