The Yield

A dictionary, even if this language isn’t mine alone, even if it’s something we grow into and then, living long enough, shrink away from. I am writing because the spirits are urging me to remember, and because the town needs to know that I remember, they need to know now more than ever before.

I was buried by scripture, but buoyed by hope, and so when we got our second spring, having two little daughters again in Jedda and August, we opened up Prosperous for all the people. The bula and I would go for long walks up to Kengal Rock. I’d explain how the old people walked up there through those same pastures, used their stone axe before White men brought their own metal axe, where lovers met and they left marks on trees […] Bula would look up at me at those times, eyes wide, all the wonder in the world bustling in their minds. They are my fondest memories, showing bula what great people they came from long ago.

“Joe mentioned Native Title. That he talked with Pop about claiming the land.”

“Couldn’t ever happen—I’ll tell you why—there’s no artifacts. No water in Murrumby, no fish—and fishing would mean Nana, or whoever’s living here, would have a cultural connection to the land to maintain, the…well, ‘resources’—okay? Another thing, there’s no language here. Our people’s language is extinct, no one speaks it any more so they can tick that box on their government form that says ‘loss of cultural connection.’ You see?”

“Poppy taught us some.”

“Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes song? Yeah, he taught me that too. But I mean language that is connected to this place, this landscape.”

“Nana told me last night Poppy was writing a dictionary.”

Aunt Nicki shook her head before she answered. “Even if he was writing it, won’t change anything. They grew up on the Mish, remember, and language wasn’t allowed.”

They were returning to make peace. I’d give them a cuppa, and if they felt like it, a walk around the property. They’d tell me how they tracked the place down, how they remembered being here. Some were old enough to remember my mother. They were freeing themselves from their lives of good grace or misery—either way, they needed to see where everything began for them. I would talk with them, would nod and acknowledge them. That’s what the old, returning people wanted, someone there to receive them, believe them, help, in some way, to put the pieces together.

The three of them broke from a giggle to belly laughs. August felt there, felt effortlessly at home, felt as if a vibration were being shared between the three generations of women. Felt as if she might laugh that way, on Prosperous, after everything, after death and theft and secrets and lies and the muddied water, and the diesel and the blood—after all that—she felt as if she was home. Belonged.