She wasn’t lost. They thought she was, but she wasn’t. She
had only wandered a little way from the truck because the others had gone, too
impatient to sit and wait for their father’s return from checking the
fences. “Stay here,” they’d said. It was
already late with shadows slanting across the landscape, cooling the ground
which scratched and slid under her leather sandals as she found her way through
the spinifex to the other side of a spidery tree, and further in, until she
reached the ant hill. It towered above her.
She had seen them as the landscape moved past, when she had knelt up on
the seat to watch through the window, the boys pointed them out, named them for
her. Now she picked up one of the
rocks scattered around, the ones sometimes caught in the act of
turning to glass, and she hit the side of the hill to see what would happen. A piece
broke off and life was uncovered. Ants began hurrying their eggs across the cut
that she had made, to safety. She felt shame then, sorry for the damage she had
caused.
Jackie tracked her and returned to the truck to report. “Why
didn’t you bring her back?” her father had said. Jackie would have shrugged and
looked away. “I didn’t think you’d want me to.” Nothing more. What could be
left unspoken was better than words. But in this moment emotions were raw from
anxiety at the emptiness they had found upon their return, her brothers knowing
they had disobeyed, and making excuses, and her father had spoken sharply. After
Jackie found her, everyone clammed up. Her father must have been worried
because of what had almost happened in the weeks before, and because she was so
young, but not because he was afraid of the landscape. He’d been born in this
country in 1911. Burnakurra. His mother had been born in this country, sometime
in the eighteen hundreds. She knew it too. And her mother. Who knew where she’d
been born? It was difficult to track the records. Once, years later, she’d
pressed her mother for information. “Where did they get their looks from?” Her
mother looked cagey. “They might have had Chinese ancestors,” she said. “Their
people came from Bendigo.” Father’s father, a red-headed barrel-chested man,
had half-walked there, half ridden a bicycle, looking for gold. He found it
too. So her father knew this country
like people know their local neighbourhood, and like people know and don’t know
their mother. He could easily disappear back into this country. His father is
buried there. And others. There is a picture of him as a boy – aged ten or
eleven – lying on his stomach on a home-made raft, on a dam. He is naked. That’s
how it seemed, free and easy like that. They did bombies into the water. But right
now the man was implicated in the potential for what might have happened if his
daughter had gone missing. He loved her dearly, of course.
Grace. When you look it up it has something to do with being
absolved despite your own imperfections. Made clean again. The child was found.
No harm was done. Jackie led them back to the place. Her father picked her up
and carried her, but the memory of the fortnight before was fresh in his mind. It
had been only two weeks since the boys had gone missing, lost all day in the
bush, with the whole town after them. The trackers were able to tell part of
the story, but not all. Finally they were found by chance. The boys were older
than her of course, three and five. They kept their shoes on, kept to the shade
where they could, didn’t drink from the sheep troughs, kept an eye out for
snakes, and were found about this part of the day, just before darkness fell.
Her father had taken a bicycle and ridden out.
And ridden. He was searching for some kind of clue. When they were found
he couldn’t be contacted. No mobile phones in those days. There’s still no
coverage out there probably. He came back well into the night to the good news,
a candle in the window, the sign, so her mother says. He was thoroughly exhausted.
His early onset rheumatoid arthritis flared up and he stayed in bed for
days.
That story became part of family history, as comforting as a
meal, disaster averted. Sometimes they dined out on it. One day in the middle
of her mother telling the story someone said, “You must have been a bad
mother.” Her mother stopped dining out
on the story then. Perhaps there was an element of truth in the ill-conceived
comment, but not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Nothing but the
truth is that everybody is a bad mother some of the time. All mothers. Even an
exemplary mother is a bad mother from being too exemplary. Truth was she was a
good-enough mother. There is the phrase that a psychoanalyst called Donald
Winnicott coined: the good enough mother. As far as I know, nobody has coined
the phrase: the good enough father – but I could be wrong. Most fathers are
seen to be good enough, if they are regular guys. If they don’t do bad things. If they are relatively neutral. Mothers have
always been required to meet higher standards, because of the pedestal that supports
them. Now things are changing, it seems.
Maybe this mother wasn’t coping well. Maybe she wasn’t
keeping a proper eye on them because of the displacement. She suffered illness.
This wasn’t her country. She’d been brought here. One day she collapsed weeping
in the red dirt because her clothesline laden with wet sheets had fallen onto
the ground. Jackie came and helped her fix it then, because he knew she
belonged somewhere else, where there was greenery and dampness. Still, she was
the mother. It was her job. Her fault.
That second time, with the girl, they were in their father’s
care. That time it was their fault. The father. The children. The girl herself
should have done as she was told. They all felt this. She felt this. Even so,
there was a trace of self-flagellation about the father for a while – a shadow
that soon faded. The story told later didn’t place blame. Neither of the
stories placed blame. They were anecdotes. He might have taken it out on
Jackie, speaking sharply. “Use your initiative!” But Jackie had been encouraged
not to use his initiative, and to follow orders. Jackie was too well-mannered
to speak sharply back. He was philosophical. It was a job. It kept his family
fed for another couple of years. Besides, he didn’t mind the anger. At least it
wasn’t patronising. It was understandable. The love. The investment of time and
effort. All’s well that ends well. The
boys were found. The girl was found. Other children went missing and eventually
turned up again. Jackie’s own children. They learnt to fend for themselves. It
was necessary. All’s well that ends well.
Memories are rehearsed, or untended and allowed to die. That
time with the ant hill she experienced something that she held to all her life.
Later she thought of it as a kind of revelation. At the time it was beyond words, and later,
destroyed by them. It was something to do with the way that life was connected.
She transferred that memory as her body changed and replaced itself, the memory
of a feeling that she’d once experienced. Sometimes a child has clear vision. Then
it is gone. But she remembers knowing that she experienced it once –a glimpse
into the mystery of life. She knew once that even ants glow with it. And that they
are sentient.
The word came later, a container for the memory, but like
all containers served not only to contain, but to separate – to protect,
preserve, prevent. Her own wandering away became a family story, and it dated
the experience for her. She would have been no more than two years old – too
young to know anything, or to be a philosopher. And this is why she knows that
human beings have souls, and so do ants, or maybe that they all are souls, and that having is neither here nor there.
(c) Iris Lavell 2013
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