Image: ‘Nathan O’Nions’, Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)
There’s an old fella chuckling in the sitting room and I walk in to see a large red cassette player on the floor. Backgammon is being played on the table, and sitting before the game is my mother’s father.
He laughs more when he sees me. ‘Hey, young Marianne,’ he says. ‘Heard you moved.’
‘Oh? Yes I did.’ I bend down to kiss him on the cheek.
‘I liked knowing you were here. On Miller Street. Where your Nana was born, you know?’
‘Yes.’ It’s been seven years since I’ve seen him, since Mum moved away.
‘Join us? Fresh cuppa?’ Grandad says. Then he speaks to his friend. ‘This for a packet?’ He’s pointing at the cassette player.
‘You’re selling that?’ I ask.
‘Yes.’
‘Does it work?’
‘You can find out if you want.’
*
Before light Joe is taking my fridge down off the moving van in the hydraulic lift and I’m helping to tilt it to get it on the trolley and we’re already sweating. He gets me to wipe the empty van clean and we get in an argument on who is paying for the coffees this morning.
This road is becoming very familiar. I have two sets of keys in my pockets travelling from two addresses. Moving is the worst. But at least I have Joe.
Outside my old place are the piles we made yesterday, what’s left after the trip to the dump. Joe’s been moving rubbish into other people’s bins until they catch on. There is still stuff that doesn’t fit in my new place, stuff I could’ve sold if I got my act together, and stuff that belonged to Tyler.
*
Yesterday Joe convinced me to take my television to the dump. ‘This one’s fucking heavy. You’ll want a flat screen, one, hey?’
‘I’m not going to buy another one.’
He tapped me over the head. ‘That’s a dumb thing to say, Marianne.’
I took out the batteries of the remotes.
‘Say goodbye now,’ he said as we stood over the waste. He got the television out of the car.
‘My dad gave the TV to me. And he got it from someone else. It’s not valuable. Must be older than me.’ But I got tears in my throat from speaking and I wished I hadn’t said anything at all.
‘Don’t look,’ Joe said, lifting it up above his head.
I turned away. ‘I’m sure someone could have used it.’
‘You feel like that here.’ There was a large crash of a noise as the television landed in the fill. I could tell we were both unsettled by it.
But Joe just had a cigarette while I pushed bags of clothes into the donation bins. I can’t talk about things with him. One of the bags had a hole in it and clothes were running out. I picked them off the ground and pushed them in the shoot. I hesitated at a few items. Waved a white polo in front of Joe that used to belong to Tyler, ‘This would fit you?’
I probably shouldn’t have said that.
*
I’m grateful to have someone helping me move. What would I do without him? Not much. I don’t own a truck licence and he’s quick at things I’m slow at.
Joe puts things outside my unit complex. The Christmas tree has already gone. And the surfboard. Hard to imagine all these things going when I’m not looking, I don’t see the people who are picking and choosing and perhaps it’s good I don’t. I put out a few deck chairs and some bags Mum gave me when she moved to Victoria. I think they are mostly filled with books and some odd ends. I haven’t actually ever looked through them properly.
Joe and I take out the mattress together. It’s only five years old and still in the plastic it came in and I use it when my cousins come to stay but Joe reckons I won’t need it. He’s going to buy me a flash new couch for my new place he says. And he reckons I shouldn’t have things under my bed, it’s bad luck.
*
Yesterday after we fought I was so mad at Joe while he was driving. Then I started to look at his biceps and how he was driving and remembered how I loved him. He has been wearing the same old clothes for three days, a grey singlet and a grey pair of cargo pants, and he won’t go into the cafe but he looks like when I first met him, rough and wild but you reckon there’s a kindness there otherwise his eyes wouldn’t look so much like wounds.
He looks like when I first met him, rough and wild but you reckon there’s a kindness there otherwise his eyes wouldn’t look so much like wounds.
Joe found the mugs Tyler made in his pottery class I was going to throw out and they were the first things from the truck he put in my new place. He put them on the table in the courtyard.
*
I feel a bit frozen getting rid of all these parts of me. All of this stuff just there on the street. Joe comes beside me and puts down my old shag rug and a yoghurt maker.
‘Open those bags,’ he says. ‘So people can see what you got.’
I pull open the bags like he told me to. I get a shock when I see what’s inside one of them. ‘Hey!’
‘What is it?’
‘These are cassettes.’
‘You got a cassette player or what?’
‘I could hang them up on the wall.’
He laughs.
‘Okay, bad idea.’ I turn one over to read the front of the case. ‘Wait, recorded language. I was going to throw these out?’ I don’t say the name of my grandmother’s language that’s written there on the tape. I’ve never said it aloud to Joe. It just hangs there in my head, and my great grandmother’s voice is there in my swirling head too, saying the words I remember.
‘You can’t listen to them,’ Joe lights a cigarette.
‘But…’ I’m turning them around. There’s at least twenty of the cassettes. Some cases are broken from being moved around a lot in the bag.
‘It’s good, mate, take it,’ Joe says.
I look up and see there’s an Asian man behind Joe crouched down touching at the mattress.
‘He probably needs it,’ Joe says to me, scratching under his arm. And I block out the racist things that come out of his mouth, instead focusing on the tapes.
I feel a bit frozen getting rid of all these parts of me. All of this stuff just there on the street.
‘I’m going to keep these tapes.’
‘Your Mum didn’t want them. Chuck them.’
‘She gave them to me.’ I am touching them, caught in my own moment. I have no way of listening to them.
Joe’s already gone back to the truck.
I think someday I’m going to tell someone that being in the truck while Joe is driving it is terrifying. I think someday I’m going to tell them what he does. But not now. Tonight it is too dark.
I lock all the doors to the unit before I get in. The tapes are on my lap. While we’re pulling out of my old driveway for the last time I see the man is pulling the plastic off the mattress. I resist the urge to make a sound of gladness.
*
I ask Joe if he would stay another night at the new place. He agrees and we both have long showers and get fresh clothes on. I get us some takeaway and wine from across the road and I drink a bit because I think we both deserve it. It makes me loosen up and talk to Joe like I used to and start kissing him. I feel real good on top of him but after I come he gently pushes me away and shrugs when I ask him why.
We open the window to let in some air and the sounds of my new suburb. He is soon asleep.
I spend the time I’m not sleeping thinking about the cassettes in my bag and what’s on them. Whose voices are on there? What did Mum want me to do with them?
*
The next day Joe has left before I’m up.
My bed is surrounded with boxes. I go out into the courtyard wearing my underwear and peek out of the meshing wondering where I am. I see Tyler’s imperfectly-crafted mugs and wonder if I should have them, why I still have them. Why Joe put them here.
A bit later I’m waiting at the bus stop. The street ugly in its industry, but amidst the construction noise, the chatter of fairy wrens from a blooming street tree. Something so beautiful, in somewhere so ugly, a line I might remember to tell Joe when I see him next.
I need to get the old place ready. Get my bond back. I’ve got a shovel to dig out the garden. When I arrive at the front the Asian man and the mattress are still there out the front. Everything else is gone.
‘Do you need a hand?’ I get on the other side of the mattress and we pick it up. ‘Where are we taking it?’
We walk down my street and turn off into a housing commission street. This is where my mother grew up, in one of these houses.
We drop the mattress momentarily in front of a gate and the man opens it and we walk down to the house and into the kitchen.
The tiny room is piled up with broken things, collected things. Old tennis shoes. A whole line of televisions like the one I threw out.
There’s an old fella laughing in the sitting room and I walk in and the first thing I see is a large red cassette player on the floor. Backgammon is being played on the table, and sitting before the game is my mother’s father.
He laughs more when he sees me. ‘Hey, young Marianne,’ he says. ‘Heard you moved.’
‘Oh? Yes I did.’ I bend down to kiss him on the cheek.
I spend the time I’m not sleeping thinking about the cassettes in my bag and what’s on them. Whose voices are on there? What did Mum want me to do with them?
‘I liked knowing you were here. On Miller Street. Where your Nana was born, you know?’
‘Yes.’ It’s been seven years since I’ve seen him, since Mum moved away.
‘Join us? Fresh cuppa?’ Grandad says. Then he speaks to his friend. ‘This for a packet?’ He’s pointing at the cassette player.
‘You’re selling that?’ I ask.
‘Yes.’
‘Does it work?’
‘You can find out if you want.’
‘Okay. I’ll buy it,’ I say.
‘This is my mate Jim,’ Grandad says.
‘Hi Jim.’
Jim pours me a cuppa tea, black. He says I can have the cassette player for free as he got a few things from me already.
‘Thank you.’
‘Backgammon, this a gammon game alright,’ says Grandad, laughing. ‘You know how to play?’
‘Not as fast as youse.’ I say. ‘Hey, Pop, I have these tapes I want to show you. Can I bring them over?’
He nods and I walk back to the house, collect the tapes, see a text from Joe, wanting to know what I’m up to. I quickly reply.
When I get back to the house the sun is gently setting and reminds me of afternoons with Mum in the garden. She was always a deadly gardener.
Pop looks closely at the tapes, stroking the cracks in the glass cases.
‘Let’s see if they work, hey?’
We spend hours listening to the tapes, interviews with Elders Mum has taken. There is so much in these that I can barely comprehend. Mob speaking language fluently. Talking in English about the old days, talking about things I didn’t even know about. I feel this harsh burn of pride and shame rolled together and as my grandad talks to me I think about how far I’ve come from the girl who wanted to bleach her skin when she was little and to forget her roots so the kids at school would stop teasing her. To know I’m proud of being Aboriginal now, so proud I belong to this family and this culture I can feel that’s so alive. Grandad is crying hearing his mum’s voice and I’m crying too and Uncle Jim is just making us pot of tea after another. I tell them that red cassette player is the most magical thing I have seen.
‘Lots of things change, hey,’ Jim says. ‘Technology. People buy music on their phones now. But when I first came here, this was how people listened. I found it near the creek over there and I put it on the news to help learn the language.’
I switch the tape over to the other side.
‘I miss your mum,’ Grandad says. ‘You must miss her so much, too.’
‘Yeah, I do.’
‘Who you living with these days?’
‘Oh, just by myself. Just got a unit in Toowong. Packing up this one and going over to live there.’
‘Oh you out that way, hey.’
‘Yeah well my boyfriend comes over on the weekends. He works in Toowoomba during the week.’
‘Jim said he met this boyfriend of yours,’ he pauses. ‘Marianne, you want to stay here?’
‘No, no, it’s okay.’ I look around the place and think there’s no room to swing a cat in this place. I want to go back to my spacious new clean unit. ‘No Grandad, I’m fine.’
*
I rush back home. Stumble around looking for the switches. Switch on the light, it’s so dark. I rush to respond to Joe’s messages. It’s been four hours. I call him but he doesn’t answer. I start to panic and leave voicemails. I pace the apartment. I shove squares of chocolate in my mouth. And then I hear his car in the driveway and I want to run to him and I want to hide under the bed.
These are the things that I think about so I am not here:
a) The sky is blue
b) because molecules in the air scatter blue light from the sun more than they scatter red light.
c) Blue light comes from the sun but also our phones and computers and TVs.
d) The surface of water reflects sunlight.
e) River is also vein in my family’s language.
f) Blood is red but veins are blue.
g) Veins look blue because light has to penetrate the skin to illuminate them.
h) Blood is red because of the haemoglobin inside our red blood cells.
i) We see the red light of the sun at sunset.
*
Luckily the Uber driver doesn’t ask questions of me. My face is swelling. The streets blur until we get to Miller Street.
I can’t speak as my grandad’s friend opens the door. Jim shows me where Grandad is crouched over a game.
‘It’s okay, it’s not your fault,’ Grandad says, and he hugs me. And he asks me to repeat what he’s just said.
I feel the tears drip down onto the board, and wipe my nose on my sleeve.
River is also vein in my family’s language.
Blood is red but veins are blue.
‘It’s okay and it’s not my fault.’
