The miracle – by Nadia Mahjouri
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This story contains racist terms that would have been used in the period the story portrays. It also contains a depiction of suicide: help is available here.
Launceston 1958
Lori believed in miracles. But not the sort them God-botherers bang on about – Dad told her they were all just a bunch of hippa–critts, all fancy hats and hell fire. And anyways, Lori didn’t want their sort of miracles - the type you had to beg for, and wait for, and hope for, and deserve.
No, the miracles Lori believed in were the ones she saw every day: the pink soft blossom that swelled and swelled until it was a red ripe apple, the insides of the egg that turned from breakfast to a fluffy chick simply by waiting warm under its mothers’ wings. She believed in the miracle of the softness in Father’s eyes when Mother gave him a hot cup of tea, milky and sweet; the way his weary face crinkled into a smile, only for Mum. What Lori would do for a miracle like that, she couldn’t say.
But it wasn’t likely today. The grass out the back of their place at Trevallyn was on fire. Dad reckoned it was under control, but Mum had the panicked look in her eyes and she took herself off to bed even though it was Saturday morning and they hadn’t even hung the washing out. Lori heaved up the basket of sodden clothes by the back door and took them to the Hills Hoist, winding it down so she could reach. The spinner wasn’t working so she wrung each item out, one by one, twisting hard, hands pushed up together, a Chinese burn on the old towel. Sprays of water dripped onto the dry earth below.
The grass fire sent black, dust-soaked smoke into the air and, mixed with Lux, the smell cut deep into her nostrils. The clothes’ll stink to high heaven if I leave them out here, Lori realised, dropping a towel back in the basket and lugging it back over the tarnished brass doorstep. Piece by piece, she draped the sodden clothes across the old wooden airer in the sunroom.
Behind, in the living room, on the faded brown armchair by the empty fireplace, Pete sat. The Whispers had stopped since Doctor Brennan gave him the Pills – two in the morning, two at night, blue buttons that held him together like a too-tight shirt – uncomfortable, wrong. The Whispers had gone, but so had Pete.
Lori missed her brother, but it was certainly easier than when the Whispers spoke to him, and so she smiled as she passed, careful not to make too much noise on the wooden floorboards. She didn’t want disturb Mum, whose nerves were delicate these days on account of the Worries.
From the back door, Dad came in. His face was darkened by the summer sun, but in the crevices in his leathery skin you could see the remnants of the handsome man he once was – the young man that stared back at him from the wall. A young soldier, in green army slouch hat, one side pulled up at the corner, badges shining from his lapels. The picture was in an oval frame and hung pride of place above the mantle. Young Dad, smooth-faced and optimistic before he left for the War. The first time.
But this wasn’t the Dad that walked in just now. This Dad was the After-Dad. After War One and War Two, the only Dad Lori had ever known was two times removed from the young man in the photo. Pete and Andrew – her big brothers – had known another Dad, the Dad-In-between-the-Wars, when there was still a possibility of better times. But none of them had met the young man in the picture – that Dad was only for Mum to know. Dad-Before-The-War.
Lori was a Post-War Baby. And she was learning there were lots of them. A boom, they called it. When she heard the term the first time, she’d imagined an explosion, like the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, but instead of radiation, she saw babies, falling from the sky like shrapnel. A baby boom. A population explosion. She imagined herself, one of a post-war atomic rainfall of human life, pink limbs and soft bottoms raining into laps and gardens, scattering amongst leaf litter and into gutters, falling into vegetable patches and school playgrounds, sliding down pitched roofs into the arms of waiting mothers, excited to have a new pink life to care for, now all the dying was over. She liked it, being a child of the great baby boom, liked what it meant. Perhaps, like the chickens and the apples, she herself was somewhat of a miracle.
‘Fire’s under control,’ Dad said to no one in particular.
Pete said nothing, but his nose twitched.
‘That’s good, Dad,’ Lori smiled, piling the washing back into the basket so there would be room for him to pass.
At the kitchen sink, Dad scrubbed his hands with pine tar soap. Beside the steel sink was a saucer where a small wooden nail brush sat. Dad picked it up and started scrubbing hard, bristles scraping his nails, tap screeching, brown water pouring off his earthen fingers.
‘Keep the bloody wolves from the door anyway. Can’t afford to lose this year’s hay.’
Lori didn’t know why Dad said this. There were no wolves here, at least she didn’t think so. She did hear screaming and howling in the night, but she was pretty sure that was possums and devils. But she didn’t ask, of course. Dad was never keen on her asking. Curiosity killed the cat, he’d tell her. And she knew enough to know that wasn’t something you wanted. So she kept her questions to herself and got on with it.
Outside she used a small, rusted trowel to crack the dry dirt. She thrust her hands into the clumps, feeling through the dirt for the small round potatoes that had grown there over the summer, her eyes wandering over the blackened, smouldering grass to the barbed wire fence and the bush beyond, a wildness that reached as far as the Trevallyn Dam. Not that you could get that far on foot– it was all cliffs and lookouts on this side. But you could see it– the vast expanse of water and the giant concrete wall that held it all back. She’d go out there later when she’d got the other veggies ready for tea. No one cared where she was, so long as the jobs were done and she was back in time to help Mum cook if she was up to it. Otherwise, she’d do it herself, boiling the potatoes, grilling the chops, leaving the green peas for last so they wouldn’t get mushy.
Finished, she took the freshly dug pink eyes inside, stopping on the way to collect two brown eggs from Girl Fred and Ginger’s wire run. She placed them in the metal basket on the laminated kitchen bench, wiping dirt from her hands on the tea towel by the sink. Behind, Pete walked in. She couldn’t see him, but she could hear his mumbling, angry spitting sounds, though she couldn’t make out the words. Talking to someone that wasn’t there. Lori put her head down and hoped he wouldn’t notice her as she opened the top cupboard and checked for the pills she’d set out for him last night. Dammit. He’d not taken them again. She’d have to work out a way to slip them in his dinner somehow if this kept up. He was no good without ’em.
But she’d worry about that later. Right now, she had somewhere to be. Changing into heavy leather boots, Lori chastised herself for the scuffed toes and reminded herself to give them a polish before Dad spotted them, all messed up like that.
Boots on, she ran, limber, fast and easy through the backyard to the spot where the barbed wire could be pushed down enough for her to scramble through without snagging her clothes on the way.
She deftly manoeuvred through the barbs in a single leap, landing gently on the rocky earth. Brushing herself off, she ran, fast as the wind, down the rough path through the scrubby eucalypts to the end of Pamona Rd. The heat of the sun was in the air already and the smell of the smoke from the grass fires all around burnt inside her nose. She slapped at a mozzie on her leg. From where she was, she could see the outline of the houses, the old Hydro village, where up until a couple of years ago the New Australians had lived. The Wogs. Dad said he could smell ’em from a mile away reeking of garlic and onion and sweat. Some of them had stayed behind when the dam was opened and the camp was shut, picking up bits of useless land that no one wanted at the back of Pamona. There they built houses with bright red bricks, concrete driveways branching off from the grubby road, backyards a constant fight against the wallabies and possums, nets covering fledgling fruit trees and veggie patches against the infiltration of the bush, bearing down on them from behind. Lori’s bush.
Crouching behind a spiky plant at the edge of the bush, Lori watched two dark-eyed men, each with a thick head of brown hair. They were sitting on hard plastic chairs in a verdant backyard, shovels flat on the ground beside them. They both wore nothing but the white sleeveless vests Lori’s Dad wore beneath his checkered shirts. The taller man drew on a cigarette, exhaling smoke that danced as it billowed straight upwards on the still air. There was not a breath of wind. The other was talking, animated, the words round and fat to Lori’s ears. He stopped, silent for a moment, and a burst of laughter came from both men, their tanned shoulders jumping as their chests rose and fell.
Lori loved to watch the Wogs at work. She loved the smells that came from the houses, the neat rows of veggies, the way Wogs’ tomatoes were always somehow redder and fatter than the ones they grew in their backyard. She once saw a fat-bellied mother and her skinny sister, thick black hair on their arms, cutting prickled green thistle buds with knives from the heart of a sparse prickle bush, kneeling on their dimpled knees to pick the baby marrows far before they were ready, yellow flowers still hanging on the end of the green finger.
Still hidden behind the prickle bush, Lori let out a low whistle. Two short, one long. Two short one long. Their code.
A long moment followed until the bush behind her rustled.
Lori froze. ‘Two four ninety-six, is that you. Over.’
‘Loud and clear eighty-eight, alpha tango bravo. Over.’
Lori jumped up and turned to face Donna, and the two girls burst out laughing.
‘Come on,’ Lori called, and they broke into a run between the reddened rocks towards their special place – a lookout fort fashioned in a rock side overhang. The way was long and so they slowed to a walk and Donna stopped to tie an undone shoelace. Lori waited, catching her breath.
Donna was a slight child too, though proudly just a little taller than Lori, and one step closer to puberty. Her dark eyes were striking against her pale olive skin, her thick black hair hanging messy around his ears. Lori had seen her father tousle it with affection – it had stopped her in her tracks – such strangeness from a man towards his child. She guessed it was a Wog thing. She couldn’t remember ever having touched her father, at least not on purpose. He had touched her, occasionally, with the flat of his palm when she acted up, or when mother was so wrecked with nerves that she’d taken to bed for weeks and he’d been forced to brush her hair, but every stroke was perfunctory, purposeful. Not for nothing, just like that.
Donna’s dad had come all the way from Italy to build the dam. That’s how she said it anyway, as if it was him and him alone that built it, but Lori knew that wasn’t true. All the tanned and sweaty men that lived up this way came from Europe to work for the Hydro. Their sisters and mothers and wives had joined them here. The New Australians. Lori wondered if that made her an old one.
Around them, Lori became aware of a distinct hum, a vibration that ran through the leaves like electricity, a manic buzzing. It began at first quietly but grew, second by second to a cacophonous rumble. Lori cocked her head upwards, towards the treetops where the sound was coming from. Donna looked up too. All around, the trees and leaves seemed to be shaking, vibrating with the hum.
Smiling, Lori tapped Donna’s shoulder and pointed. In front of them, attached to the gnarled trunk of a tree was a creature emerging from the hard brown crust of a shell, its thick black wings and red beaded eyes staring ominous into the in-between. Who knew what those eyes could see? Pete had told her once that bugs could see in all directions at once, that they saw colours that she didn’t even know existed. They were otherworldly – appearing from nowhere and blanketing the bush in brown discarded casings. Tree trunks were covered with carcasses of entire creatures, six legged shells siting empty and abandoned, an everlasting deadness while the living beating hum of life fought its own way out, black rimmed, red eyed and alive.
The living creature gone, Lori picked the brown carcass off the tree, its six dead legs gripping so firmly to the rough bark she had to pull to remove it. She cradled it in her hand as she and Donna followed the rough wallaby track towards their lookout.
‘Wonder if you can eat them?’ Donna asked, looking at the carcass in Lori’s hand.
‘Don’t reckon. Anyway, why’d you wanna?’
‘No reason, just wondering. The aborigines prolly did. Don’cha reckon?’
‘Dunno.’
They both walked quietly, turning the idea over in their heads, until they reached the pile of rocks at the bottom of the lookout. They’d been coming here for years now – since she and Donna had become friends at school in year one. Donna didn’t speak much English then, but she was alright now – you could barely tell she was a wog if you didn’t know. That’s what Lori’s Dad had said, to make her happy when she visited. You’re welcome here anytime, Donna. Look at’cha! If it wasn’t for them eyes you’d look like a real Aussie.
Donna’s eyes were nutty brown, darker than the cicada in Lori’s hand but lighter than the Cadburys she had wrapped up in a tea towel in the bag on her back. Donna’s hair was always messy, and her skin was whiteish but when they held their arms side to side, Donna’s skin was tinted the soft green of young eucalypts while Lori’s was like the white trunk of the ghost gum, tinged with the orange pink of rusty nails.
Lori stuck the cicada carcass to her shirt like a brooch and reached up, snagging her fingers behind the crag of spotted dolerite that jutted out between the dirt and the tree root. She pulled herself up, her footing sure on the root behind her. Donna followed, stepping inside the dark cavern. A slab of rock made the floor, and above, the girls had swept the roof of spiders with a brush of leaves and hung an oil lantern from an errant root. When they were younger, they’d pretended this was a magic place, somewhere like the faraway tree or toad hall. But now they were 10, they could tell this land wasn’t the gentle whispering kind like the forests of the enchanted wood. This land thrummed differently to the soft land of their fairytales, more cicadas than bumble bees, more spiky echidnas than fluffy hedgehogs, more tiger snakes and copperheads than hapless toads. This was the land of screaming devils, and of nasty biting ants that made Lori’s legs swell to twice their size and itch so hard she ripped layers from her pink skin during her sleep.
Donna set out food on a bit of flat wood, picnic style. Bread, a handful of red tomatoes, some fresh white cheese. Lori had two boiled eggs, which she tried to peel for minutes before she gave up and put them down, half shell half pockmarked white on the end of the log. From her other pocket, she pulled out half a bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk, took a bite and put the rest down on the wood. Donna screwed up her nose at Lori’s offerings.
Before they could eat, a crash in the bush made Lori peer out the cave mouth. Squinting, she looked down the valley to where she could see a familiar form. Pete.
In the bottom of the valley, Lori could see her brother in the thick bows of a huge eucalypt. He was high already – the kind of high that only men could reach, men who could shimmy and stretch from the ground to the first great branch, metres up the wide, green, grey trunk. She clambered down from the cave and began to run.
Crickets scattered around her as she crashed through the scrub, knocking wattle and gum leaves, long red scratches tearing into her pale legs as she leapt over rocks, hoping not to meet a sleeping snake. In the distance, she could see Pete had a thick length of hessian rope, which he was flicking up and around a higher limb, foot wedged tightly in the split trunk. As Lori slipped across the rocky ground, closer, she saw the loop he had made, just the size of a man’s neck. All around, the scent of late summer swelled, piss ants and dry crumbling leaves. Cicadas.
‘Stop ya yabbering,’ Pete was muttering. ‘I’ll shut ya bloody up for good, ya good for nothin’s.’
‘Peter,’ Lori called gently from a distance away, so as to not surprise him. She’d seen his episodes before, his fighting with the Whispers. Lori knew the voices were just for Pete, but she could see the shadows swirling around him, the darkness that chased him, hungry to gobble him up. She feared perhaps she could hear them too. Sometimes Pete’s shadows followed her, even though her mother called her my little ray of sunshine. It was a miracle they hadn’t caught her yet.
Pete kept climbing, deep in conversation with his Whispers. Lori stepped closer, called again, reaching towards the tree.
Pete saw her now. Lori knew she was only ten years old and short for her age, though tucked within her chest she kept the knowledge that her reading age had always been several years ahead. She pulled it out now. You’re small, Loretta, but you’re nobody’s fool. An old soul in a young body, she’d heard Dad say once. And with this encouragement, Lori summoned her greatest voice and said with authority,
‘Peter Brendon Blakely. That is enough. Get down now.’
She wasn’t sure if the words got to him or if it was the shock of the sound of her, but Pete looked down and, for a moment, Lori saw the shadows part. Pete – the real Pete, not the one who heard the Whispers – looked down at her. He smiled, but his forehead furrowed.
‘I’m sorry, Lollypop.’ he said, as he slipped the noose over his head and jumped.
The air rushed from Lori’s chest, a great vacuum inside her as she watched her brother fly through the air, rope still slack around his neck.
With the air from her lungs came a scream. All around, currawongs flew from the gums, a great black curtain rising to the sky as her brother fell.
The rope unfurled and reached its full extension, the loop drawing tight around Pete’s neck, his black stubbled face a reddened pink like the inside of her mouth, his eyes squeezed shut tight. She didn’t want to see, but she couldn’t look away.
Bile rose in Loris’s throat, and her scream turned to simple air and stuff-less vomit. A silent moment stretched until the air rang with an almighty crack as the branch broke and fell away from the trunk, delivering Pete to the ground with a bone-crushing thud.
Peter tried to groan but only a gurgle sounded. Lori, wailing, scampered towards him, stepping through the tangle of branches towards his crumpled frame. She wrestled the heavy rope to get her finger inside the loop around his neck, but it was too tight.
Donna, who had followed Lori through the bush, stood silent and frozen into place a metre from the broken branch. But when Lori screamed, Donna finally came to. She began to run, bat out of hell, back towards Pamona Road, hair catching on branches as she pushed her way through the dry bug-littered bush.
Pete’s gurgles became more panicked. Desperate, Lori began to sing, a song that rose unbidden as she searched for the end of the rope and tried to loosen the tight knot around his neck.
This little light o’ mine, I’m gonna let it shine,
This little light o’ mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
Pete was scared now, scared as she was, and both their breaths were short and frantic, Lori’s fingernails ripping as she dug into the brown strands of rope, body shaking.
‘Dad!’ she shouted, helpless, into the vast empty bush as she worked. Pete’s gurgling shifted into heaving sobs.
‘Mum! Donna! Help!’
No one came.
Lori’s fingers worked the knots loose and she frantically pulled the strands apart. Pete’s devastated face was crumpled and wet with tears. She pulled at the loop around his neck, loosening it, and a sob emerged from her brother that would stay with her for the rest of her life, a sob that carried with it all the earth’s most desperate sadnesses – the mourning of mothers, the yearning of lost lovers, the ache of an infant separated from the breast.
‘I’m sorry,’ Pete was saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ His words merged into sobs, sobs into words, impossible to separate. Lori wedged her small body among the jagged branches and cradled her brother’s head in her lap, stroking his dusty brown hair, wet with sweat and sticky with dirt.
‘It’s alright, Petey,’ she said. ‘It’s gunna be alright I just know it. It’s gunna be alright’.
In the distance, Lori caught a glimpse of Donna’s Dad and a bunch of New Australians pushing their way through the bush towards them. ▼
Image: Matt Palmer - Unsplash
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