A knock at the door. The child Beatrice stood there, puffing. ‘Aunty Fatima said to come now.’ Urgent, arms swinging from her shoulders, trying not to run on the spot. Excited.
‘Come in Beatrice.’
Beatrice came into the kitchen, looking around and up, at the cupboards, the clean stove, the jars of spices.
‘It’s cool in ’ere, eh? Mr Seddum’s house cool too, like this one. I been there.’
She leaned her chest against the kitchen counter and ran her palms along its top. Beatrice watched her hands circle and skate and spoke, suddenly, to Liz.
‘Aunty Fatima said, Aunty Fatima said you bring some plates and like you have, like gardiya have with soup, you know, you say, spoons and stuff.’
I moved and stood beside Liz. On the other side of the kitchen counter we could see only Beatrice’s head and arms. She was a glove puppet performing.
Then she swirled before us, was transformed in the open space beside the door, and left. She leapt from the back verandah, her long skirt like a sail filling on the mast of her bare black body, and skimmed across the grass to the gate. She turned and called back, ‘Youse are eating at Fatima’s aren’t you tonight, and she’s got food for you?’ She ran back to us. ‘Hurry up she said I was to get you and to hurry up.’
We walked across the small school grounds, the grass under our feet soft and still wet from the afternoon rain, and Beatrice running ahead and back and all of us laughing in the warm moist air as the sun crashed and slowly exploded.
The school gate was locked. We climbed over it and jumped into the red dirt on the other side. Beatrice grabbed Liz’s hand as if to lead her. Before us was a corridor of corrugated iron huts, and scattered in front of each were blankets, pieces of foam mattress, and a few old beds with wire bases. Long green grass grew beside and between the huts, away from the walkways. Scrawny dogs curled up near the bedding growled as we walked past. There were old tins and plastic, large stinking turtle shells, and fires flickering here and there. Behind, coconut palms were silhouetted against a sky darkening and growing stars.
Fatima lived close to the school and next to Milton’s family. Milton was the school gardener that Murray had said was a good worker. His old Hilux was parked on the track between his family’s and Fatima’s hut. A gas lantern perched upon the car’s tailgate gleamed in the deepening twilight.
‘Good evening.’ Milton’s voice came softly from the shadows, the deepening darkness of a hut door.
‘G’day Milton. You eating with us?’
‘No, no...’
Beatrice released Liz’s hand and, two steps ahead, said, ‘Wait,’ shouted, ‘Fatima I got ’em.’ Liz and I stood holding hands, smiling bemusedly. Beatrice leaned against the tall fence around Fatima’s hut and, with her nose and fingers through the chicken wire and creeper, talked to the excited dogs barking at her from the other side. The fence sagged a little further with her weight, and rocked back as the dogs leapt against it.
Fatima stood on the concrete at the door of her hut. ‘Billy, Liz, you are here. Shut up Patches. Fat Boy I’ll sting you. You wait there, near that table, there. Milton you see.’
The dogs cringed around her. I turned and saw, in the lamplight, a card table erected on the sand. Between it and the Hilux sat an old man, cross-legged, on the ground. A woman lay on her side beside him. Milton’s voice rushed ahead of him as he approached. ‘You eatin’ with Fatima tonight eh? This is my father, Sebastian, and my mother, Victoria.’
Sebastian reached out. We shook hands. Victoria turned to us, nodded, mumbled hello. Liz kneeled on the edge of the blanket which Victoria lay upon, and Victoria moved to give her more room. I sat on the ground before Sebastian. We made a sort of small circle beside the card table. Dots, a short line, a square.
Milton crouched with us. He said, ‘My father could tell you lots of stories.’ Looking at his father he pointed toward me with his lips, then continued, ‘This fella likes stories, you never know no one like it.’
Victoria looked at the crumpled comic pages by her side and folded them up into the pocket of her skirt.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Fatima’s been talking to me about the old days and the old people and that.’
Sebastian’s cigarette had gone out, and he placed it behind his ear. His face was lit by the lamp in a way that made his eyes dark holes in his face, his cheekbones high and taut. Despite the awkward light I saw the cigarette butt fall from his ear and catch in his white hair as if in a spider’s web, or, in that light, a tattered halo. Victoria shifted onto her hip and glanced at a magazine picture she had taken from her pocket. She tore around its edge, tidying it, and put it away. We cast glances out of the circle.
‘Get out! Get out dogs, down! Somebody get this gate now.’ Fatima, with oven tray held high, had one of the children who drifted in the darkness around us open the wire mesh gate and let her through. She placed the black enamel dish gently down on the table. The child leaned against the closed gate, watching. Another small shadow came up, perhaps two.
‘Fatima, did you, it’s great, did you cook this?’
Sebastian clucked his tongue and rocked gently on his haunches, his shaking hand slightly raised. Victoria sat up. We all gazed at the dish which held roast chicken and vegetables.
‘No,’ Fatima laughed. ‘I got, the Sisters, they cooked it for me. I got no oven here and they did it for me. I asked them. I knew you were coming and I wanted good food for you. I asked you. I told that girl Stella for mother, to tell you ... You got plates and ... we haven’t got, so you go first and...’
Liz and I had each brought a soup bowl, dinner plate, and knife, fork, and spoon. The others had no utensils. So we all ate with our hands.
Figures went by on the edge of the lamplight, and came from the darkness between the fires flickering further down the alleyway. Some called out, but Sebastian, Fatima, or Victoria grunted at them and they disappeared. Once or twice an older person came into the circle of light, had a mouthful of our food, and left. Milton joined us in the meal, but only after much insistence on the part of Liz and myself.
Sebastian had some disease, and his hands shook uncontrollably. He spoke more and more, as the night wore on, of old times, and of the mission.
Fatima brought out a watermelon shell filled with fruit salad. We used the bowls and spoons Liz and I had with us for this. Liz and I ate first, then the others, using the same utensils.
‘Me, Walanguh, some other fellas, we got rid of Father Pujol. He had to go. He was a hard man but he cared for us Aborigines. In the old days them missionaries look after us. They tried I reckon. Over Dresfield way people had gelignite. That politician’s mob, they put gelignite up people’s bums, yes. True. Blew them up. People was shot.’
Sebastian was a silhouette in the hard lamplight. Shaking, shaking, sometimes almost shimmering as a fire nearby blazed, and the stars so high above him.
‘Early days this lot gardiya been shoot ’em Aborigine, you know blackfella? They been shoot ’im and see ’im. Ah, that man drop. White bloke see ’nother one, ’nother Aborigine, and he go to shoot him too. He running running and the white bloke go to shoot.
‘Bang! Bang! Not the gun shooting, a bang like a big bomb, and that Aborigine bloke disappeared. Gone! That was Walanguh that one, Walanguh when he was young, eh?’ He looked at Fatima who nodded and grinned her confirmation. ‘He had the power that fella. That dead one, Dada that was, nothing. He had no power. With power, they can disappear, fly, you know. Sing things.
‘Early days they been make magic. They can sing lightning too. Anything.’
Fatima had cans of cool drink she’d kept on ice. She and Liz sat at chairs by the card table and drank Coca-Cola. Milton and I prompted Sebastian to continue. He spoke on. The dogs moved in closer to Victoria who drew her finger through the dust and occasionally smiled up at one of us. A young couple somewhere close shouted at one another.
Next morning at school Beatrice ran up to Liz and embraced her. ‘You ate supper with Aunty Fatima last night didn’t you? You had them things? You had chicken, and potato, and cool drink didn’t you?’ She looked around at the beaming faces of the other small children around her and then back up to Liz. ‘And I came to get you, didn’t I?’ She hugged Liz tighter.