A Lullaby For Lost Mothers
Jo Grobler (Macquarie University)
Departing Coonabarabran, NSW
A persistent drizzle makes the road slippery. The early morning fog, thin and low, a phantom roaming the landscape. Arian’s Volkswagen Beetle, long-brewed in 1970 with an avant-garde rear engine, carries dainty cargo inside its body. She gravitates toward fairy wren rather than falcon and her only proviant for the trip is Kafka’s Trial. Despite her slender frame, she is blessed with huge hair, unmissable and authoritarian, especially in wet weather. Expectedly, her utopian curls have already swollen into a fascist frizzy bubble. Inconsiderately inconvenient, given she is on her way to a resuscitative romantic encounter. New South Wales country roads offer peaceable times, and she surrenders to her imagination dispatching her to the French Camargue. She, a flamingo lazing her legs in shallow water, gaping at wild horses galloping free as if they were birds. Her backbreaking attempt to keep the Volkswagen’s wheels in sync on this treacherous road shatters her reverie. Dark memories enter the edge of awareness. Rain on a road, long ago. She visualises a sinkhole and dumps the disconsolate mindspace inside.
Near Binnaway she makes a side-road pit stop to destress. Eucalyptus trees flank the road, a guard of honour for centuries-grown mother trees piercing the low-lying clouds. She tiptoes across the soggy soil to enter the bush. Underneath the trees’ leafy limbs lay curled-up strips of bark, evidence of eucalyptus self-healing. Leaning closer to the steadfast sky-raker, she notices dark oval-shaped birthmarks on the trunk. A twig with newborn leaves grows from each of the marks, testifying to the life-giving magic of this eucalypt Hygiea. While her fingertips foxtrot over the tangerine-striped tree trunk, yellow-crested cockatoos flap upside down from overhanging branches, boisterously flagging her as an intruder in the Bush. Outsider perhaps. Still, she kneels before Hygiea and prays.
‘May we both survive the Anthropocene.’
Galahs, a patchwork of rose and fossil grey, splash sleep from their eyes in the puddles on the uneven road. Watchful, while she wraps an umber and black striped feather in a travel tissue for later healing rituals. When the thud…thud…thrum of a helicopter comes within earshot, the birds flitter up to shelter in the trees. The flyer executes a whirlpool turn in her direction, its nose diving so daringly low that, for a heartthrob, she expects to be pursued as Bonnie without Clyde.
Black Stump Way
The windscreen wipers sing a soothing swish. Road signs in quick succession warn of snake curves and blind corners. She, enchanted by the Warrumbungle landscape, opens the driver’s seat window and stretches her hand outside to capture the clean air.
Movement from the right.
A kangaroo leaps from the Bush. Her foot searches, fumbles, finds the pedal. The Volkswagen stutters and slows.
Damn, the kangaroo is nursing a joey. I almost …
Another leap and powerful hind limbs thump on the tarmac. Jill and joey are sanguine about their surroundings, and the mother’s glance in the direction of Arian’s steel coffer seems a hastily added footnote. But the kangaroo halts in the middle of the road. Her head motionless, eyes fixed on a space behind Arian, rotating her ears to probe, to focus her sharp hearing, and Arian traces consternation and fear in the mother’s dark eyes.
Every passing second validates Arian’s suspicion that the mother is sensing possible danger to herself and her offspring, a danger she cannot define or voice. And Arian too, due to her inferior human hearing, unable to pinpoint the danger. Still, she needs no clairvoyant to warn her that three figures frozen on a road invite tragedy. Three in danger make a family in need. Family, at times, means tough love. She must force the kangaroo off the road. Now. Which makes her Snow White’s wicked stepmother with her hand on the handbrake and a foot almost touching the accelerator … easy now … release the handbrake. Her foot presses the pedal down, gentle as a moth’s caress, to get the VW in motion.
Surely, the movement will force the roo to seek safety in the bush.
Volkswagen still crawling forward. Arian, in full control. The bush on the left, the way the kangaroo was heading, now closest to her and her joey.
Logically, the roo will take the shortest escape route.
Arian lowers her foot on the accelerator. Foot down a fraction, then a fragment more. Eyes on Arian, the majestic animal half-twists her upper body, arms pivoting towards the direction she came from. Muscular thighs transmit force to propel her legs up in the air. Her giant body plunges to complete the turnabout and her hind feet strike the drenched asphalt.
Any slip is death.
Jackal’s deceit
Johannesburg, South Africa. They arrived home. Arian ten or so, ran inside after Ma unlocked the door, eager to escape the fervent sun. Jamie had started walking a week before, on his first birthday. She giggled every time Jamie fell on his nappy after taking three steps. Then Ma frowned at her, and Ma’s lips disappeared behind her teeth. On entering the house that day, she salvaged her colouring book from Ma’s spring-cleaning heap destined for the orphanage, and sat on her bedroom carpet, on her knees, pink pencil in hand, when she heard the screams. Ma darted into the bathroom, holding a sobbing screaming Jamie. Ma was holding Jamie’s feet under the tap, water cascading over his round feet.
Years later, she and Pa could only guess. Was Ma so panicked that she, at first, missed the obvious seriousness of Jamie’s injuries? Trying to ease her boy’s pain under cold water? How did Jamie’s feet burn? Why did Ma drive to the hospital, rather than call the ambulance? The truths of the tragedy remain a secret. Pa was at work. Jamie was too small to remember anything, and she didn’t see how it happened. But she knew something was wrong. She stood beside the washbasin and being short, she only needed to bend her knees a little to see the soles of Jamie’s feet. Ma, she said, Jamie has big blisters under his feet. Ma stared at her. Ma, look, it’s blisters like water balloons hanging from Jamie’s underfeet.
In his baby seat, Jamie sobbed and screamed and howled. She propped her fingers in her ears, looking out the passenger window. Despite the sun, rain blots started plunking down. Jackal was marrying Wolf’s wife—Grandma’s story when it started to rain while the sun shone. Jackal fell in love with Wolf’s wife and kidnapped her. He waited for a sunny day to marry her, but the clouds realised Jackal’s deceit and created a downpour, ending the ceremony. She still blames that silly old tale.
Friendlier drops started to drizzle a pattern on the window. Just as she thought the trip would never end, she saw the tall hospital building. Almost there, our last traffic light. That was Ma’s last words. The car turned, zig-zagged over the crossing, turned over, landed on its wheels again. She and Jamie survived. Ma never woke up.
Killer Wheels
On the sluiced New South Wales road, the kangaroo slips. The mighty creature thuds down on the road. The blind corner behind her block out vision, but now Arian hears it too. A truck from behind? Destined to annihilate the three of them?
The mother staggers to her feet. A second time, the soaked road beats the giant down. She turns the steering wheel, a wild swivel, and the Volkswagen hiccups to a halt on the road’s shoulder.
Get up. Get off the road.
She opens the car door and steps out. That rumble is getting louder. Perhaps she should just do it. Get off the starting blocks and sprint to where the mother and baby lay surrendered on the viperous road. Maybe she is braver and stronger than she believes. The picture floats vividly inside her head. Her bravery bolts her sure-footedly over the wet road and her adrenaline-enhanced strength is sufficient to lift the kangaroos in her arms and carry them to safety. A neuron in her brain sparks a signal, the image changes. Her bravery bolts her sure-footedly over the wet road. She lifts the kangaroos in her arms, the blind corner no longer conceals the truck. She sacrifices her life for a mother.
Wait …
The kangaroo is rising. She finds her footing, joey in-pouch. She surges forward and slams the side-road soil with the urgency of ocean waves crashing against rocks. For disquieting moments, her newly adopted family disappear from Arian’s view as a leviathan truck speeds past … toot-toot-toot … its killer wheels splashing her bell-bottom jeans with abstract art mud stains.
Bit late to blow your horn, nitwit.
The Western Plains Hunter
The kangas drop anchor on a narrow clearing between a dirt road and a thread of gum trees. Arian feels light-hearted and happily weepy. Why not? She just witnessed a marvel of mammal tenacity. While she pauses a moment to be certain the two-some are safely on their way, the mother halts, glances back, lifts her right paw and salutes Arian before turning away.
Behind the wheel, she tries to stabilise her breathing, shuffles herself until snug on the car seat, begins to mind map a Kafka essay, and reads the blood-dripping letters on the signboard…
Private Property
Trespassers eat bullets
for breakfast
The arrow points towards the dirt road, precisely the one beside the clearing. And the trees, where she wishes the kangaroos had vanished from sight.
But, ob-vi-ous-ly, have not.
The rotten rum-n-rattle of the same whirlpool-turning helicopter she encountered earlier overtakes her still-alive Volkswagen, flying low. With the flyer’s cabin door open, she discerns a man’s arm reaching over the pilot’s shoulder. As he leans forward, the elongated snout of a rifle hanging over his shoulder becomes visible.
Oh hell.
The hunter points his fingers at her kangaroos, defenceless, on the stumpy grass of the clearing. She jerks the steering wheel to the right. Underneath her, the Michelins abandon nonchalance as they swing east-west, carving short-lived s-curves on the wet road. Despite the grunting axle, studs and nuts crackling like dry wood in a bushfire, she touches down on the dirt road. The Volkswagen rips sideways, avoiding a fencepost, only to flatten a wiry gate fluttering rudderless on one hinge. She’s gaining ground, fuelled by increased blood pressure. The cabin man, perhaps interpreting her movements as a declaration of war, lifts the rifle to his shoulder and aims.
‘Don’t shoot, asshole.’
As she cuts off the final round -ole- sound of her favourite English word, she realises the pointlessness of slinging language at the hunter. Her foot gives the accelerator additional encouragement, and she finds herself beside the mother. The race is on. In the first lane the hunter, second lane her, third lane the mother and baby, fourth lane the eucalypti.
‘Leap for the bush. That way.’
Her hand flaps outside the car window, pointing out the tree line. As if the kangaroo lived in the city all her life. The mother gives a few leaps to the right. Close now, to the shelter of the trees. Almost safe. Great.
Oh no!
The kangaroo loops to the left. Under siege by engine uproar and psycho maniacs, she abandons the bush, her survival instinct disrupted.
The hunter fires. Two shots in quick succession.
Concomitant with the resonance of the gunshots, the VW Beetle (her steel armour), skids to a halt. One glance in the rearview mirror confirms the origin of the burning smell. Holes in the bonnet covering the engine are breathing out ashy tendrils of smoke like a humpback blowing out water. She kicks open the driver’s door, dives, and strikes.
Random spots dance before her eyes. Gorgeous. The Australian Alps covered with snow. Pa and Jamie, at home on their skis, fly down the slopes. She, in snow boots, pumps out gigantic leaps with robust legs, running with kangaroos. Leaving behind a monotonous and meaningless life filled with chores and leftovers, she runs free and wild. Abruptly, she falls. While the snow, like an experienced methodical mortician, buries her, she watches her companions disappear over the horizon. Her screams for help unheard.
My companions … kangaroos … I must … where?
Her mind feels dank, her head heavy, and the explosive sound of rotor blades as intrusive as cicadas droning inside her eardrum. The refusal of her head to lift itself necessitates her to engineer her fist as a pulley under her head to heft it from the muddy ground. At least now she can watch the helicopter’s movements. The flyer is floating on airwaves so close to her that she can make out the crooked toes attached to oversized feet dangling outside the flyer’s open cabin. Blinking her eyes into focus, she sees the dense black hairs sprouting from the legs. How had she not noticed the hat before? The shadow of the wide brim hides the hunter’s eyes. From the sides of the hat, piercing through the broad fluorescent hatband, two horns curl upward. The horns of a mighty bull.
What game is Minotaur playing? Bloodfire, where are Jill and joey?
The Western Plains gunman (well, obviously a minotaur) shoulders his rifle, angles his head and aims. Rolling onto her side, then onto her tummy, two push-ups later and she’s on her feet, shouting. Catapulting her words at him, hoping to hit his Achilles heel, her fingers cupping her open mouth, a makeshift megaphone, her free arm waving above her head like a windsock in a tornado.
‘Don’t shoot. She has a joey. Mother … and … joey … if you’re aiming at me … I’m pregnant.’
Silence
The drizzle has stopped. Clouds are drifting away like spectators departing an open-air theatre. Rays of light penetrate slits between trees, making the bush translucent. Eucalypti leaves glow silver-green. Somewhere, not far, a kookaburra laughs and a flock of white bursts from the trees. Drops of water clinging to grass blades drench her feet as she walks and kneels beside her kangaroos. Her fingers probe the mother’s still body for signs of life.
Arian, you can fix the world with your hands.
If only, Ma. How do I unmake this senseless killing?
Her kindest fingers tickle the joey’s ears while she places her other hand inside the mother’s pouch and tries to position the palm of her hand underneath the joey. Not that easy. Her fingers feel for a place, any handhold, kindly gently, to lift the babe out without injury.
‘Sweetling, apologies for the rough ride.’
She envelopes the joey in her hoodie, encloses him in her arms and hums a lullaby for lost mothers.
Jo Grobler is a lifelong student, currently undertaking a Master of Creative Writing at Macquarie University, Sydney. While home is Adelaide, South Australia, her heart is camping out in the Australian Bush. She completed a PhD (Education) in South Africa and published non-fiction in Colloquium. Jo’s fiction writing explores themes of freedom, belonging and violence.
