Butterfly Song Read online

  ‘Hi, Jessie. How’s property law this year?’

  Jessie sits down on the checked lounge. ‘Yeah, don’t rub it in, Charley. Carlson’s still going through the terra nullius doctrine. Still telling everyone that blackfellas weren’t here when Captain Cook got here. The whole law’s fucked. It’s based on a lie. What am I doing here?’

  Charley coughs. ‘Jessie, this is Tarena. She’s a first-year student.’

  ‘Hi.’ I hold out my hand to shake hers. She puts her hand out fist first and grabs mine in a monkey grip, thumbs on top.

  ‘Welcome to mind-fucker’s paradise,’ she says. ‘Where you from?’

  ‘Cairns,’ I say.

  ‘Another bloody Queenslander. I’m from Walgett. We don’t get many cane toads where I come from.’ She pulls out a sandwich from a white paper bag and starts to eat. ‘Want some?’ she offers.

  ‘No thanks, I already ate,’ I lie.

  ‘Are you straight from school?’ Jessie asks.

  I nod.

  ‘I thought so,’ she says. ‘You’ll get used to it. Some of us, like me, have been around here for a few years. Still trying to get it all together.’

  Another student walks in. A guy with a round belly and a goatee. He’s wearing a T-shirt with Aboriginal art on it. Charley introduces me. ‘Hi, Norman, this is Tarena. A new student.’

  He smiles and nods as he places an armful of textbooks on the desk.

  ‘A bit of light reading?’ I joke.

  He doesn’t laugh. ‘I’m preparing for the moot.’

  Where I come from, the word ‘moot’ has connotations relating to women’s private parts. ‘What’s that?’ I ask.

  ‘A moot is a mock court. We do it for assessment. You know, you have someone act like the barrister for the defendant, and the other person pretends to be on the prosecution’s side.’

  ‘It’s something you can do instead of doing an exam,’ says Jessie.

  ‘Great,’ I say, rolling my eyes.

  Norman goes to the computer and turns it on. The screen-saver message flashes: ‘Always was, always will be.’

  ‘What’s the time?’ I ask.

  ‘Koori time,’ says Jessie, pointing to the red, black and yellow clock on the wall.

  Norman prints his document, then leaves.

  ‘He’s a bright bloke,’ says Charley. ‘They reckon he’s going to be a hot-shot barrister.’

  ‘I’ve got to get going,’ I say.

  On the steps on the way out, I see Norman again, his arms full with all those books for his moot. I’d be too shame to do a moot. I’m way too scared to even talk in class. Big shame job if the lecturer asks me a question. I just like to keep quiet, like at high school. Too worried I might say something stupid. Too shame people might find out I don’t know anything, that I really shouldn’t be here.

  the made-up legend

  Cairns, 1973

  ‘Mum, I can’t sleep, I’m so itchy!’ I scream.

  She comes into my room. ‘Sshh,’ she says. ‘Let me tell you a story.’

  ‘What sort of story?’

  ‘It’s a true story, true God. But it happened long, long ago.’

  I curl up in my bed. Her head is touching my own. I can smell the menthol on her breath from her cigarette.

  ‘In the beginning, there was a little girl who liked to play under a frangipani tree. The tree was on a hill. It was strong and tall with white and yellow flowers. Sitting under the tree, the girl could see out over the cliff, towards the open sea. She would pick up the fallen flowers and put them in her hair, or she would hold them close to her body like a soft kitten. The scent surrounded her skin as the crushed petals caught under the edge of her fingernails. This was her favourite place in the world. She could spend hours under the shade of that tree, playing with the butterflies.

  ‘The little girl grew up to become a beautiful woman. One day a young man from a faraway place was sailing by the frangipani tree in a boat. He saw the woman sitting under the tree and was taken by her beauty instantly. Pulling his boat onto the sand, he walked up the hill to the tree. He sat with the woman, singing her songs and playing his guitar.

  ‘And so they fell in love. They arranged to meet in secret under the frangipani tree every time the young man’s boat came to the island. The woman knew that her father would not let them marry. But she loved the man so much she agreed to run away from the island and go with him when he next returned.

  ‘She stayed by the solitary tree all day and all night, waiting for her lover to return. She stayed for two moons. But he did not return. She stayed there for another six moons but he did not come back. She would not leave, and some say she went mad, like a crazy wild woman. The tree grew bigger and bigger, until one day it grew into her flesh, piercing her heart, absorbing her every breath into its trunk, branches, flowers and petals.’

  ‘Is the frangipani woman like the poinciana woman?’ I ask my mother.

  ‘Did Uncle Tally tell you about the devil woman who lives in the poinciana tree?’

  ‘Yes. He says not to walk under poinciana trees, especially at night.’

  ‘Uncle Tally talks about a lot of old stories,’ she says. ‘He remembers my mum telling us them when we were kids.’

  ‘Is the poinciana woman ugly?’

  ‘No, she is beautiful,’ my mother says.

  ‘What about the leaves? Are they poisonous?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Does she eat people?’

  ‘I don’t know. Don’t be silly.’ She waves her hand to signal me to stop this talk. ‘There was one big tree at the end of my street when I was growing up. Let’s just say, as a girl I never sat around waiting under those trees. When we were growing up the boys used to try and get us girls to meet them there at night. We would never go, just in case she was there.’

  ‘What about the frangipani woman? Is she beautiful?’

  ‘She is, but no one really notices her. She’s waiting to make her mark.’

  ‘X-mark?’ I say. I had heard my mother talk about my skin with other people, saying I had the X-mark.

  She laughs. ‘No. Go to sleep, Tarena. And don’t scratch.’

  In my mind I can see a frangipani tree. It is large and the bark is scratchy. It’s like a tree with eczema. The trunk is thick and its roots split the ground underneath. There is a woman, but her face is blended into the tree. I cannot see her.

  frogs in the rain

  Thursday Island, 1992

  There are frog sounds in the rain. The fan stirs above as I lie on the bed. There is an awkward dip in the middle and I can’t relax. I roll from side to side, listening to the frogs. It sounds like they’re saying, Soak. I imagine them as singing, happy little green frogs dancing in the rain. I can’t sleep. I want to dream. I want to be a green little frog singing in the rain.

  My mother sleeps in the bed beside me. I can hear her breathing. I can feel her dreaming. I know she keeps things in her head that are never said. They are only dreamt. She watches them over and over, like a private movie session, revising the script, dubbing the dialogue, editing out some of the peripheral footage. A lot can change in the giant dark of one night, without so much as a word passing her lips.

  I wake early, before my mother, and walk over to Uncle Ron’s. I have an idea that Uncle Ron and Aunty Margaret might be able to help me with some information for the case. How do I prove that my grandfather Kit carved the pearl-shell butterfly? They must know something about him, and maybe about my grandmother Francesca.

  It’s before seven o’clock and already there is a buzz about the island. I stop on the rise and look down towards the ocean. I can see other islands in the blue distance. To me they seem like stepping-stones to another world.

  I’m not sure where the house is. I stop and ask a woman sweeping her front path.

  ‘Just up the road in the blue house on the corner, love,’ she calls.

  Uncle Ron is cutting the dead branches from the banana tree in his garden. ‘Hey, you�
�re up early.’ He puts down the machete and leads me through the door. In a gold frame on the television there is a photograph of him dressed in pearl-diving gear.

  ‘Wow,’ I say. ‘You look really young there.’

  ‘I was twenty-two. I dived all round this area. Your grandfather Kit dived a few times. My father was diving for a long time, even before the tank equipment. The place wasn’t so cleaned out, so you didn’t have to dive as far down. They went freestyle diving.’

  ‘That’s before Kit left to go to Cairns,’ says Aunty Margaret.

  ‘What was he like?’ I ask.

  ‘He was a deadly musician. He used to play in a band,’ Uncle Ron replies. ‘The Castaway Cruisers played at the hall on Saturday nights.’

  Aunty Margaret is stirring the spoon in her tea and smiling. ‘Yes, that’s right. The social club used to organise those dances. We got together at one of those nights, remember, Ron? You asked me to dance.’

  ‘I thought you was the one asked me to dance,’ he chuckles.

  ‘You proper getting old, Ron, if you can’t remember that. Have you forgotten how good I could dance too, ay?’

  ‘I remember. How can I forget those big feet of yours? Now, go and get those old photos,’ Uncle Ron orders her.

  The chair scrapes across the lino as Aunty Margaret gets up. She comes back a few minutes later with a rusty biscuit tin, its once-colourful parrot brown and dinted. Her hands fish through a bundle of black and white photographs.

  ‘Yes, that’s him there.’ Aunty Margaret points to a face in the left-hand corner of a group of men. They’re sitting on chairs, each with a guitar on the grass in front of him. ‘Yes, Kit could play the guitar, the mandolin and the ukulele.’

  I hold the photograph up to the light. Kit’s face is boyish. On the back of the photograph someone has written the words ‘Guitar man, 1938’.

  ‘Your grandmother Francesca would sneak out to meet him.’ Uncle Ron makes a clucking sound as his false teeth settle back in his gums.

  ‘Yes, he won her heart, he did.’ Aunty Margaret is smiling.

  ‘Do you remember if Grandad Kit made Nanna Francesca a butterfly out of pearl shell?’ I ask, showing them the newspaper clipping.

  ‘True God,’ says Uncle Ron in amazement after reading it. ‘A pearl-carved butterfly is worth that much, ay? At that price, I wish I’d carved it. I can’t say I remember if Kit carved something like that back then, but I was away diving a lot around that time. You should ask some of the others, they might remember.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘I do remember there was a song about a butterfly, though.’

  ‘That’s right,’ says Aunty Margaret. ‘Kit wrote it for Francesca. Ron, do you remember how it went?’

  ‘Spread your wings, come with me to the seaside,’ Uncle Ron begins. His voice screeches and he coughs.

  Aunty Margaret interrupts. ‘That’s not how it goes.’ She tries to hum a tune.

  ‘That’s not it,’ Uncle Ron insists. ‘You sound like you’re humming “Mary Had a Little Lamb”.’

  ‘Did Kit ever record it?’ I ask.

  ‘It was a bit of a hit here on the island, but it was never recorded,’ my uncle says.

  ‘Shame about that,’ Aunty Margaret adds.

  ‘When did he write it?’

  ‘Around that time just before the evacuation.’ Aunty Margaret tries to hum a few more bars, but gives up to make another cup of tea.

  ‘Did you know they bombed Horn Island during the war?’ Uncle Ron says.

  ‘Who bombed it?’ I ask.

  ‘The Japanese. It was where the Australians had a runway for planes in and out of the Pacific.’

  ‘Did you see the bombs?’

  ‘We could see the fires and hear the noise from here. It was proper frightening.’

  ‘Were you scared they might bomb Thursday Island too?’

  ‘No way they’d have bombed here,’ Uncle Ron tells me. ‘Not with the Japanese pearlers that are buried here. Some people say there’s a Japanese princess buried here too. The Japanese have too much respect for that.’

  ‘Yes, but we all went to the mainland,’ Aunty Margaret butts in. ‘When we was evacuated. We went to Cairns and stayed in a school hall, I think it was. Then when the war was over we came back. But for others, like your grandad and nanna, they left before the evacuation. They wanted to stay on the mainland.’

  ‘Can I have a look at the rest of the photographs?’ I ask.

  ‘Sure, go ahead.’ Uncle Ron goes back outside to continue his work.

  In the collection there are pictures of young girls in dresses with puffy skirts standing in front of trees, bicycles and houses. A netball team. A group of soldiers. A man holding a fish. Then a photograph of a group of men and women. The men are holding guitars and ukuleles. The women are wearing leis and grass skirts, their arms in hula poses.

  ‘That’s where Mum gets it from?’ I say to Aunty Margaret, showing her the photo. My mother loves to hula and has often tried to teach me to do it too.

  ‘Your mother could hula, yes,’ says Aunty Margaret. ‘We did the hula a lot in those old days.’ She peers closer. ‘That’s them, that’s your grandmother and your grandfather.’ She points to a man and a woman.

  I examine their young faces as I sip my cup of tea. So that’s what they looked like. ‘Can I take this and make a copy?’

  ‘Sure,’ says Aunty Margaret.

  I am so excited to have it for my own record, but it might also be useful when I’m talking to other people about the case. I put the photo carefully in my bag.

  a song before the thunderstorm

  Thursday Island, 1941

  It was one of those hot afternoons just before the heat cracked the sky. Walking back from the island store, Francesca saw a butterfly. She followed it, flittering and frenzied, until it stopped under a frangipani tree. It hung there, frozen, upside down. Francesca moved her hand forward. Its wings reacted with one flitter, then resumed their statue position.

  ‘Hey, Frangipani, follow the butterfly to the man of your dreams!’

  She looked out to see a man with hair slicked back like it was wet. A light-coloured wooden guitar hung from a strap around his neck and shoulders.

  ‘That’s not my name.’ She looked up again and saw that the butterfly had settled high among a cluster of white and yellow flowers. Its wings closed and opened.

  ‘I know. I meant to say Frangipani. A frangipani, if it’s closed, means the bearer is looking for some love. A fully open one means you’re taken.’

  Francesca laughed. ‘You made that up, just now.’

  ‘No, true God, that story is as old as the frangipani, as true as love.’ The guitar had now slid to his back.

  ‘I know you. You’re Kit Plata, the guitar man.’

  ‘Yes, I’m Kit.’ He held a bud in his hand, twirling it like a toy. The closed white petals peaked from his fingers. ‘Which one are you?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s for me to know,’ she said, walking away. Her steps were clumsy, almost fake.

  ‘Wait,’ he called out.

  She looked at his feet. He was dressed in long white pants and a clean, light-blue shirt. The clothes were old but well pressed. He was wearing no shoes.

  ‘We’re playing at the Island Hall to raise money for some supplies from the mainland. Meet me there on Saturday night?’

  ‘You’ll be lucky,’ she said as she left.

  A couple of minutes later, Francesca arrived at her house. From the verandah, she could still see the guitar man under the frangipani tree. There was a flash of lightning, then the rain.

  ‘Where have you been?’ said Essa at the door.

  ‘Nowhere, just the store.’ She looked back over to the tree and watched Kit swaying, his lips moving as he sang and strummed his guitar.

  Essa noticed her gaze. ‘Come inside,’ he ordered, ‘it’s not safe out there.’

  the guitar and the frangipani tree

  Thursday Island, 1941

  From Thu
rsday Island, you could see across the strait to Horn Island, where the government men were building an airstrip. A line of smoke rose to the sky and merged with a cloud.

  Francesca was going to collect the eggs. Buster the mad dog ran around the side of the house at a grunting pace, chasing a hen. Francesca jumped, startled. Floating from a place far away.

  Essa’s head appeared at the side of the door. ‘What are you doing? Get that mongrel dog. If Buster gets that hen it’ll be your din that cops it and not his.’

  Francesca waved a stick around to distract Buster from his prey. The hen seized that moment to escape, scuffling across the yard and into the pen. ‘Rotten dog,’ Francesca yelled.

  She collected the eggs and walked to the front of the house. Stopping on the steps to catch her breath, she looked out to the frangipani tree. It was the same place she used to sit when her grandfather came in smelling of the sea.

  ‘The green sea, it’s in my bones,’ he used to say, ‘like that old turtle. I might travel far but my heart always stays.’ The old ways were important to her grandfather. When he was alive he used to tell her stories of pearling all around the seas, going far away in the luggers. But he always came back here.

  Francesca looked at the toppled-down house where she had always lived. The place used to be alive when her grandfather was still here – before he died, before her parents died. Now both her sisters had moved away and only her brother Essa and herself remained. The house was old, falling down. She could hear the walls of the wooden house cracking in the afternoon sun. Cracking like the yearning inside her. Beyond stood the frangipani tree. She wished she could see the guitar man today.

  The next day, she passed the frangipani tree and noticed that someone had carved a shape on the trunk of the tree. It was clear to see. She was not mistaken. The round body of a guitar was imprinted on the light grey bark. There were lines for the thin neck, and the handle at the top was drawn simply – two sets of curves, like the wings of a butterfly.