Butterfly Song Read online

  I hear the doctor’s feet shifting in his Hush Puppies. ‘I’ll go check with the supervisor.’

  My mother rustles through her handbag. She finds a cigarette and lights the wrong end with her lighter.

  A nurse comes running over. ‘You can’t smoke in here.’

  Mum stubs the cigarette on the floor, then lifts me off the narrow bed. ‘We’re leaving.’

  My legs won’t move properly, so she carries me out of the hospital. Her high-heeled shoes are tapping. As we walk out, I hear my mother say, ‘I hate hospitals, they just make sick people sicker.’

  Outside it is almost dark. At the bus stop there is a woman with a bag of groceries and a man with a briefcase. The man is playing with the spinning lock on his case. He looks up as we sit down on the bench. The woman stares at my arm in its sling. Bandaged in plaster, it looks like a snow sculpture. Then the woman looks at my mother.

  My mother stares back. ‘It’s just a small fracture. Only a little fall.’ She whispers in my ear, ‘They probably think I pushed you down the stairs. That’s all I need, bloody child welfare onto me.’ She lights another cigarette and rouses on me then, so they will overhear. ‘Tarena, what have I told you about walking on that slippery fence? You are not a ballerina, or a bloody tightrope walker!’

  ‘I’m a ballerina princess.’

  ‘Who told you that?’ My mother twists her body to form a block between the strangers and us.

  ‘The woman in the tree.’

  Mum shakes her head. Her long dark hair moves like a curtain. ‘You hit your head bad, child. Don’t do it again.’

  The woman next to us looks down at my arm and I hear her click her tongue between her teeth, three times. She must know it too. That I have the X-mark.

  catching black fish

  Cairns, 1975

  When it rains the puddles collect at the end of our street and the water runs fast. Shane and I go there on wet afternoons while our mother curls up on the lounge with one of her romance novels, purchased from the second-hand bookstore in town.

  She opens up the dusty paperback. ‘Play in the yard,’ she tells us. She turns each page slowly, slowly. We know she has fallen asleep when the book falls to the floor. This is our signal. We can slip away now.

  We head for the end of the street. When we get there we wade in, past the sticky green eggs moulded together like gelatine. We know what we are looking for. In the middle of the pool there are fish, small black fish with round beads for heads. They have tails that wriggle in spirals. Mum has told us many times about the black fish. She used to catch them herself when she was little. She called them mie-mie.

  ‘Here’s one with two heads,’ Shane calls.

  ‘Oh,’ I scream with delight, ‘let’s take it home.’

  Shane cups the black fish in his hands, tightly. We place it carefully in an empty Twistees packet we’ve found. We scoop up a few more before we head for home. The trip back is slow.

  In the kitchen I look for a suitable tank. There are lots of containers in the cupboard, all made of plastic and in many shapes – round bowls, triangles, squares and rectangles. Some have lids, but I cannot get them to stay on. I fill a large round pink container with water, sure that Mum will not mind.

  In the bedroom Clarissa is playing with her dolls. We show her our prize catch.

  ‘They’re not fish,’ says Clarissa. ‘Fish are gold with long tails. Those things are slimy.’

  ‘One’s got two heads.’ Shane picks a black fish up to show her.

  ‘Yuk!’ Clarissa covers her doll’s eyes as though protecting her baby from a horrible sight.

  ‘They’re our pets,’ we tell her as we leave.

  ‘What will we feed them?’ my brother asks.

  ‘Mum will know.’

  Mum’s eyes open slowly, then she jerks up quickly. ‘Get those bloody tadpoles out of my good Tupperware. I can’t relax for a minute without you kids getting up to mischief.’ She is on her feet.

  My brother’s hands are clasped around the container. ‘But we’re going to keep them as pets.’

  ‘Pets! They’ll grow up to be toads, and that one’s a two-headed mutant. Get it out of my house!’

  ‘Toads!’ I yelp. Not those dreadful, horn-faced things that come out after dark and jump around our yard. One night I stepped on one. It was getting dark. Mum had told me to get my school uniform off the line. Running back to the house, I trampled on a bumpy wet thing. I threw my uniform on a chair and quickly washed my foot with dishwashing liquid. I didn’t want to get warts.

  Shane drops the pink plastic container. It bounces on the lino, splashing water. The two-headed tadpole is on the floor, thrashing about. My brother scrambles for the black fish as Nobby bounds in and almost knocks Mum over. Mum says a word I know she shouldn’t say.

  ‘Don’t, Nobby!’ my brother yells, but it’s too late. Nobby licks at the floor. His red tongue captures the black body in his mouth. The two-headed fish is devoured in an instant.

  Mum makes me clean up the mess and get rid of the other tadpoles. Shane starts crying. My mother kicks Nobby out of the house. Unable to move, I watch my mother pick up the Tupperware container and throw it in the bin.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Mum comforts my brother.

  He shakes his head. He says he doesn’t want to play with Nobby. He says it was a special fish. Mum cuddles him all afternoon until Dad comes home.

  When Dad opens the cupboard, plastic lids and containers fall onto the kitchen floor.

  ‘I don’t know why you bought this useless stuff,’ he tells Mum. ‘We can’t even afford to buy food to fill them all.’

  ‘Now, whose fault is that?’ she says. Mum has just cut up an onion and is opening a can of corned meat.

  ‘Don’t start – I’ve been working back-to-back shifts.’ Dad grabs the knife from the bench and slams it point first into the chopping board.

  Clarissa, Shane and I go and sit on the verandah. We can still hear them yelling in the kitchen.

  ‘You and your stinking fish!’ Clarissa covers her doll’s ears. My brother goes and hides under the house. I wish we hadn’t gone down to Jones Creek. I wish I hadn’t suggested bringing the black fish home. I wish I hadn’t put it in the pink container. I know it is my fault entirely.

  chain of dolls

  Cairns, 1978

  In class we cut out paper dolls for a family project. A chain of dolls linked together. ‘Put your name there,’ says Sister, pointing inside the body of the first doll.

  ‘Then your mum and dad’s name, and then your grandparents’ names.’

  ‘I don’t know my grandmother’s name,’ I tell Sister Bernadette.

  ‘Then put in an X.’

  milk in the mornings

  Cairns, 1978

  The morning sun glistens. The crates wait in the courtyard. Each crate has several rows of glass bottles. The caps on the milk bottles look like gold chocolate coins. I press down hard on one cap with my finger. The cap collapses and comes out with a chunk of cream that has been resting in the neck of the bottle. The first gulp is cool and smooth. After two or three swigs, it swishes in my tummy. I don’t want any more. I pour the rest of the bottle into the bucket. Later, the bucket will be taken to the convent to feed the cats.

  At home I ask my mother why we have to drink milk in the mornings.

  ‘It’s healthy and good for you,’ she says.

  ‘Why do I have to go to school?’

  ‘You’ve got to be educated. You know it wasn’t like that for us. We only got so far and then there was nothing. You’ve gotta learn the three Rs – reading, writing and arithmetic.’ My mother sits in her favourite chair. She holds a glass of green ginger wine. ‘I left school in grade eight,’ she tells me.

  ‘But I don’t want to go. I feel silly with all these bandages around my neck and arms.’

  ‘C’mon, they stop you scratching. Your skin will get better.’ She is waving her hands and her eyelashes are flicking. ‘I had to walk two
miles to school.’

  ‘Yeah, but I hate school.’

  ‘You’re going and that’s that. You have to learn how to read. My parents couldn’t read or write very well and I didn’t get past grade eight. You are going, young lady.’

  ‘Your parents were stupid,’ I tell her.

  Mum gets up off her chair and pulls my arm so my face is near hers. ‘Don’t ever say that! You don’t know how lucky you are!’ Her breath is hot against my cheek.

  My eyes are wet, and as she lets go, I notice her face is tight. Her lips are a straight line and the whites of her eyes are like milk.

  fish

  Cairns, 1980

  Dad liked to fish. He liked to think. There wasn’t a person in the world who was smarter than my dad. He’d sit at the water’s edge, fishing and thinking quietly, the fish nibbling the bait from his line.

  He smiles at me, takes a swig from his metal flask, then holds it out to me. ‘The fish is a universal symbol of what?’ He likes to play question-and-answer games.

  ‘Faith,’ I say. ‘Jesus was a fisherman.’

  ‘No, no, no. It’s more than just sketching two lines in the sand.’

  ‘Food.’ I remember reading the story of the loaves and the fishes in Good News for Modern Man.

  ‘Only when the fish is dead. Think again.’

  I watch the black ants move onto the discarded bait. A prawn head is completely covered with blackness in motion. Half a minute of silence passes. ‘Justice?’ I put forward.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Scales of justice.’

  He laughs, but I haven’t cracked the code. ‘No, long before the fish was appropriated by religion, the fish was a symbol of the quest for knowledge.’

  ‘Knowledge?’

  ‘Yes, enlightenment.’

  ‘You’re making this up.’

  He points below us. ‘You see that fish? It’s swimming upstream. It looks like it’s struggling against the tide. But that’s not what it’s like for the fish. You see, that fish thinks it’s dancing.’

  I laugh and shake my head. There is always a deeper meaning.

  dead dog creek

  Cairns, 1973

  In heavy rains the water from the old swamp would spill over into a creek that snaked its way out to sea. I used to call it Dead Dog Creek, after the time I went canoeing with my sister and my father.

  ‘I want to go first.’ Clarissa pushes forward.

  ‘Hurry,’ Dad coaxes me.

  I jump into the boat. The pushing off is like falling slowly out of the sky. We drift into the middle of the swamp in the fibreglass canoe that Dad made. We pass under the bridge. The paddle stirs the brown water like a slow spoon through thick cake mix. It makes a clapping noise as it hits the water. My hands slip with muddy sweat. I cannot grasp the smooth wood firmly. I laugh, looking ahead over Dad’s shoulder to see if Clarissa has mastered the art of rowing. I see only her brown slender back. She sits at the front. Dad is between us. She is my older sister. In the lead, as usual.

  A wall of trees cloaked in creeping vines covers the edge of the swamp. The smell of dankness fills my nostrils. Rotting trunks that look like limbless statues protrude from the water, creating a maze. Dad edges us through, pushing with the paddle against a large mangrove.

  ‘Agghh,’ I yell. Stinky, colourful bugs disturbed by the paddle erupt from a hole. The bugs cover the trunk. They move over each other so fast it looks like the trunk might explode.

  ‘They’re just bugs,’ Clarissa calls back. She is turning the paddle with ease now.

  I look across the swamp. Thoughts of crabs, crocodiles and swamp monsters fill my head. I hold my breath and count to ten.

  In front of us a large white bird with a spoonbill perches on a stump. We pass to the bird’s right. A tilt of the head, and one red eye looks straight at me. Two blinks. The bird lifts its wing and flies off. When in flight it emits the call, Stranger danger – danger, danger.

  ‘Keep paddling,’ Dad commands. ‘We’ll go up this way and head down the creek to the ocean.’

  I know his green eyes will be lighting up in the quest for adventure, just like they did when he taught us to steer the billycart and to catch cane toads. We were his team of scouts, his pupils, his followers, his disciples. He loves this country. For him it is a land of extremes, reminding him of his youth in Babinda, south of Cairns.

  ‘Isn’t this fun?’ His voice is electric.

  I want to cry, No, let’s go back, but when I open my mouth a silly laugh escapes. I hide my face. I do not want it known that I am scared. The wooden paddle turns to concrete in my skinny arms. Breathless, I stop for an instant to rest the paddle on the lip of the canoe.

  Suddenly a swirling current sways the canoe. ‘Tarena,’ Dad calls back, ‘lead up the rear.’

  Yakkai! If we fall in I’ll have to swim to the distant bank. I do not trust the mouldy yellow lifejacket I have on. It has lain abandoned in our shed for a long time and is far too big for me. I’ve forgotten to ask Dad about crocodiles, and just the thought of the oozing black mud between my toes gives me the strength to continue. The canoe stabilises. My heavy-beating heart sets the pace as we follow the current towards the murky creek.

  An entanglement of vines covers the entrance. ‘Here it is,’ Dad calls. I remember his stories of growing up in Babinda, swimming in crocodile-infested rivers, canoeing down the Russell Heads, camping on the shoreline with his boyhood mates.

  Clarissa ducks to escape a large green snakelike vine. I shudder as something long and snaky brushes against the side of the fibreglass canoe. ‘Dad, I wanna get out of here,’ I scream.

  ‘You’ll be right,’ he calls back, ‘just keep paddling.’

  ‘Don’t be a baby, Tarena.’ Clarissa flicks hair out of her eyes. If she were closer, I would hit her with the paddle.

  Water flushes from a broken pipe at the edge of the creek, creating waves for us to bob and rise upon. We reach a clearing, and to the right is a pebbly beach. I get ready to make my break.

  ‘Look, there’s a dead dog.’ Clarissa sees it first.

  The bloated body of a Labrador lies putrid and rotting on the shore, like a stuck pig. The gizzards are exposed and fly-infested. I vomit over the side of the canoe. Wiping my face with my T-shirt, I return my attention to the paddle. I steer away from the shore.

  ‘Faster,’ Dad calls.

  We reach the end of the swamp. The creek flattens as it opens and empties into thick muddy sand. The sun is setting. It will be dark in fifteen minutes. There’s no time to row back. We are far from home. Far away from where we left the car.

  ‘C’mon, girls,’ says Dad. ‘We have to run.’

  ‘I can’t move,’ I tell him. ‘My arms and legs are too sore.’

  ‘You stay here then, and don’t move. I’ll be back shortly.’ Dad runs off.

  Clarissa and I stand together next to the canoe. Suddenly Clarissa’s feet begin to shift from left to right; she is hopping around on the muddy ground like a wounded crab. Then I feel the sandflies biting my legs, my face, my arms, even my fingers. I am crying, unable to see. I taste blood and salt. I am trying to run but keep returning to this same spot. I do not know in which direction to head. Clarissa grabs my hands and we huddle together in the near darkness, like furless dogs.

  ‘I’m scared,’ I say. I am thinking there are crocodiles, snakes and stingers lurking about in these dark waters.

  As the orange light fades to darkness, Clarissa starts to sing. She sings fragments of songs from the radio. She sings songs my mum has sung to us. Her voice is clear and melodic, the strongest sound in the darkening tidal plain. I hear my own voice and we sing together, accompanied by the buzz of sandflies.

  At last Dad returns. Our skin is numb with sandfly bites. He grabs the canoe and leads us to the car. ‘Wasn’t that great?’

  Clarissa and I sit quietly in the front seat. We do not answer. I am asleep before we arrive home.

  Dad was always taking us kids on adve
ntures, to the creek, to the beach, hiking up the mountain gorge. Things changed when we moved to Canberra. Dad worked longer hours and had less time for us.

  I wonder what happened to that canoe.

  meeting mara

  Cairns, 1978

  ‘Where are we going, Dad?’ Our father is loading up the white HQ Holden. The sun reflecting off the windscreen catches my eye.

  ‘Mossman Gorge. We’re going on a picnic.’ Dad strategically places the washing basket, which doubles as a picnic basket, in the boot.

  ‘Yay! We’re going on a picnic,’ my sister parrots. ‘Can we go swimming?’

  My brother stops chasing lizards in the driveway. ‘Are there any crocodiles, Dad?’

  Dad explains that some of the meanest, hungriest crocodiles in the far north of Queensland frequent Mossman Gorge, and their favourite delicacy is little black kids. Shane gasps in awe, releasing a lizard from his grubby hand. The small leathery reptile squirms for safety under a nearby rock.

  I am sitting on the front steps, trying to comb out a large knot that has developed in my doll’s hair. No success. My doll is going to have a short back and sides just as soon as I can discover Mum’s new hiding place for the scissors.

  Mum comes out of the house with the picnic blanket in tow. ‘Come on, Tarena, put that doll away.’ I hide my doll under the stairs. ‘Let’s go! Everybody in the car!’

  Our car shoots out of the driveway, dodging past Nobby. He yelps incessantly all the way to the end of the street.

  Within minutes we reach the outskirts of town and are cruising along the highway, amid fields of waving sugarcane, heading north towards the Mossman Ranges. The sweet smell of the cane fills my nostrils. The Holden crawls up the mountain range. The terrain changes and suddenly we are in a wet tropical rainforest. The thick foliage creates a canopy above the road.