David Ishaya Osu

April 25, 2024 / mascara / 0 Comments

David Ishaya Osu is a poet and street photographer living in South Australia. His work has appeared in Magma Poetry, Meanjin, The Victorian Writer, Poetry Wales, New Welsh Review, Griffith Review, The Hopkins Review, The Oxford Review of Books, among others. David is currently undertaking a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide.

The art of remembering

On our last day at work, we exchanged social media handles; we promised each other to stay in touch. We had worked together as museum assistants for two weeks and decided to spend the last night together over drinks, music, chats, reminiscences, laughter, hugs. We recounted moments on the job, trying to master museum vocabulary, museum paces, museum gestures, museum postures. Ten of us, new to the job, were recruited on the same day. And for the two weeks we worked together, we became a family. 

Call it the unity of strangers: from Poland, Korea, Nigeria, China, New Zealand, Britain, India. 

I once saw a building in Abuja with a familiar name printed on its wall. I broke out laughing. A building carrying the name of my colleague and friend, Asma. I took a picture and sent it to her instantly. Recently she collected pictures of her name scrawled on walls, boards, in random streets, all from different places. I commented on her Instagram: you are beloved of the streets, darling. Home anywhere in the world. Your friends will find you everywhere they go; they carry you in their hearts. That is how we keep in touch—with memories. 

Distance is no barrier—to the fondness we have shared, moments made. 

I woke up in the middle of the night missing London, remembering long walks, bus rides, train rides, street photography in central London. I logged on to my laptop and scrolled through loads of photographs I had taken. London is calling me back, I mused.

I used to claim that I do not miss people or things, yet I wake up every day with streams of memories. Memories of friends, places, of things, of losses, adventure, accidents, victories, and so on. The other day a song popped up in the radio, and boom came memories of my friend, Juliet and her sister, Judith. They are the only ones I think about each time I hear the song. We had once hung out at a restaurant and the song played that day. 

We remember people, places, in many ways: songs, dresses, cologne, gestures, words, dances, food, so many to mention. Sometimes a wink opens the window to thoughts of someone, and they instantly become a tangible presence in your mind; you want to phone or email them, or even want to be with them right in that physical moment but they are faraway. You are evoking the past into the present; indeed, the past never ended. For instance, Liskeard, as a town, will never ever pass away; it has become a full component of my psyche. I clocked twenty-eight in Liskeard. I have saved memories of a town in perfume bottles. It is not just a town—a physical entity—it is a spiritual embodiment. Small town it is, but mighty an archive of history.

Call it the unity of memories: fragments, the continuity of time, of thoughts, of generations. Call it the art of remembering. Call it the science of going back and forth. Call it the application of mind to the past. 

One of my favourite sports was listening to dad tell stories of the past. I listened with keen interest as though those days never went away; I listened with my imagination taking root in places, events, names mentioned. I asked questions, I got answers. I noticed tinges of regret in his voice as he went on; I also noticed tinges of contentment. I imagined that, one day, me too will tell stories as an older folk. I daydream ahead of time, ahead of the stories told to me. I daydream into my own stories, my own life, my own making. Visualising a future is like visualising my birthday cake—there is no limit but the vision, the cake. 

I got introduced to Joe Brainard’s classic, I Remember, during my master’s at Kent. Reading the book did not only take me through Joe’s remembrances, but it also took me through old and sometimes forgotten routes. Memories have no end; they are rivers; they meander; they flow down the slope of time; they flow into other bodies of memory; they become seas flowing from the past into the future, and from the future into another past. I think of where water bodies meet; I think of where they start from; their varying layers, depths and widths. Like water, memory takes or makes a shape on us—our experiences, our imaginations, and even our voids. 

I remember the last thing on my mind as I boarded the plane for London. I remember waking up on the flight and thinking to myself: where am I? I remember layovers. I remember the thick, smooth taste of Milo Singapore. I remember the days I snuck around the house to steal a lick of chocolate powder. I remember Istanbul. I remember my first day in Adelaide. Dreams come true.

I remember my father’s fingers. 

I remember how mother worked hard to make us keep neat nails. 

I remember I never became the neatest boy in primary school as I had aspired to be. 

I remember once dreaming that I sneaked into a garden to poo and to pick mangoes. 

I remember Nigeria. 

I remember the two mango trees in our green yard. 

I remember how I used to laugh till my stomach began to hurt. I would roll on the floor, cry and laugh. 

I remember the last time I cried. 

I remember heartbreaks. 

I remember I usually did not have the words to say my mind. I only did on paper. I would lock myself in a quiet room and put off the light. 

I remember no sandwich.  

I remember fearing the dark as a kid.  

I remember transparent curtains. And silent doors. 

I remember our first house. 

I remember the day I was knocked down by a car along Abuja-Keffi expressway in Mararaba, Nasarawa state. I suffered a compound fracture on my left leg, and I was bedridden for months. I remember praying to never get involved in any accidents again. I do not want to remember the accident twenty years after. 

I remember Fela Anikulapo Kuti. I remember he was my diet on Sunday radio.  

I remember I wanted to be a smoker. And I remember why I never got to smoke. 

I remember someone asking if I smoke to write. ‘I do flowers,’ I remember answering them. 

I remember dad teaching us how to plant and water flowers. He would hum country songs while telling us the names of flowers. He never got tired of beautifying the house. 

I remember dad saying he wanted to be an architect. But his father was not so rich to send him to architecture school. So, he became a geologist. 

I remember my father’s shelves of assorted stones. 

I remember seashells I picked from the beach. 

I remember Lagos. 

I remember trying to jump out of and into moving vans. 

I remember lunch with Unoma Azuah in Lagos. She had invited me over for a workshop. I remember her telling me to write about the blue house—the venue of the workshop. I have yet to finish the ‘blue house’ piece up until today. I remember she told me to never stop writing. 

I remember boarding school. I remember boys and girls preparing for Valentine’s Day. I remember waiting for visiting days. I remember waiting for holidays. 

I remember my mum is not afraid of snakes. 

I remember cold mornings with lemongrass tea. And honey. 

I remember my paternal great-grandmother. I remember running away from her because she had no teeth and had white things on her head. As children, we called them white things and not grey hair. 

On a visit to the village, I remember asking where my great-grandmother was. She travelled, they replied. I later found out that that meant death. Travel as death? Travelling as dying?  

I remember telling myself I will be a traveller. Like my great-grandmother. Like my grandfather. Like my father. 

I remember the last phone call I had with my father before he died.

Ana Duffy

April 25, 2024 / mascara / 0 Comments

Ana Duffy is an Argentinean-born writer. She teaches in Communications and Creating Writing units at QUT; her work has been published in Island, Coffin Bell, Swamp and has been shortlisted in QWC Flash Fiction Competition and long-listed for Fish Anthology (Ireland). Ana holds a PhD in the field of Latin American literature from UQ and, in between teaching semesters, she is working on a novel.

Language spoken at home: Spanish

A mess of application forms are scattered on Josefina’s table. I see one with a green stain that will need to be reprinted.

If not for the rain, it would be a more pleasant day.

If not for the day being a Sunday, it would be a less gloomy day.

I pour a bit of water that is no longer hot into the mate that no longer tastes of anything. The quintessence of Argentinean infusions disgracefully vandalised somewhere 12000 km away from home. I sip. It is washed-out and cold: lavado and frío, as expected. I was never pedantic enough about the whole ritual: the slow pouring of the water on the Yerba Mate, methodically set in bevel into the gourd; the right temperature of the water, never boiling hot, unless you can live with the unsupervised sticks of Yerba Mate floating as in a shipwreck. As for the mate-drinking ritual, I know of my bad habits:  a widely accepted legacy from the uni years, when the same mate could go on for as far as to a full chapter (with inevitable green stains), or as far as to the first half of a deconstructed two-hour lecture; when the end of a full mate round was determined by our concentration span, and not water temperature or taste.

I sip again. Josefina jumps at the sucking sound. I pass it back to her.

She mumbles something and keeps on filling in the application form.

‘No me va a gustar’, Josefina says, and rolls her eyes when she sees the green stain at the centre of page 2.

(I agree that she will not like this job either. But she will push on, and keep doing the work that architects from UQ or Melbourne uni will take credit for, while her own UBA degree coils in a black tube along with five years of study and green mate stains in a stationary vortex of defeats).

I put the kettle on and refill the mate: an old gourd with Josefina’s initials carved clumsily with a pocketknife. I have the same gourd. We bought it together at the markets, in San Telmo, at a time when having it meant nothing of what it now means: a whole ocean, and decades away from there and then. The gourd feels so loaded now, so heavy with every past tense plastered to it. 

Josefina fills in her third application. Nothing out of the ordinary. A name that anyone could say, and a surname that no one could: Rodriguez. An un-rollable ‘r’. An ‘o’ that was not meant to be turned onto an /oʊ/ and an impossible ‘d’, if you try to sound it with your tongue behind the teeth, instead of squeezed between them. The carnage done to the poor ‘gue’ sound is by now such a given, that she’s stopped trying to fix it altogether.

She says she would, if she could, add subtitles to everything around her. Subtitles or a voiceover. And everyone would be happy. The reader and the writer. The speaker and the listener. Maybe, she says, a full-time hologram: a three-dimensional translation under everything said, written and done. And everyone would be happy.

Spanish. Brief description: 27 grafemas. 24 fonemas. If you care to listen closely, it sounds as if you could dance it. Closed embrace. Walk. Figure. At the right time of the day (that can be any time of the day), it tastes like asado, slow-cooked, on an open fire, medium-rare. The signature sound of the “y” and the “ll”, the same fonema: as if we were pissing on the language to own it, to make it Argentinean, to sound it our way.

Spanish. Ancestral tongue, all flat-packed and put away during business hours.

Josefina asks me if I would like to hear about her dream last night.  

I say yes, because no one would want to leave an untold dream festering under Josefina’s vindictive skin. Or maybe because it’s a rainy Sunday, and rainy Sundays make me mellow and a little conforming.

She tells me about an eulogy she was giving in Argentina. An eulogy for a friend. En Puerto Blanco. In a white church. I think of Nuestra Señora de Lourdes because that’s the only church I remember. In any case, you can whitewash the walls of a church that lives, roughly sketched, in your memory. 

(No one really does eulogies in Argentina, Josefina, I know you know it too). No eulogies: we rather cry ourselves dry and exchange hugs and kisses and flowers and tissues and donate to Pétalos de Vida if playing the local philanthropist is your thing. It almost feels as if when dead people die over there, they are a tad dead-er than here in Australia, or we are a tad sad-er because we are all a tad inoculated with tango lyrics, and we are able to sip mate for hours on end in a profoundly depressing, ceremonial silence. Endemic things that give us a kind of death that is thicker, more substantial.

It’s her turn with the mate now and her hands are soft around the gourd. Her fingernails are splitting under a badly applied, inexcusable blue nail polish. She purses her lips and takes a long sip, “el agua de Brisbane no es lo mismo” she says frowning. I do not feel the difference; hot water tastes the same here than in Puerto Blanco, but agreeing with her, today, takes no effort. I nod.

And then she goes on; she describes how she was reading the whole eulogy in English, ‘in fucking English’ (she has been using fucking lately, and it pains me to see that it’s starting to sound almost natural); she says that yes, that she is sure that it was her speaking, when I ask; by now her voice has that pitch voices have when the images run too fast and the narration starts to feel out of sync. A vortex of dead and alive, known, and unknown, friends and foes, in a white church, listening to Josefina’s eulogy.

I can picture the general confusion of a non-English-speaking congregation when Josefina goes “we are gathered here today to bid farewell (a bit overdone, I’d say) to the amazing (she cannot remember who had died) whose goodness was beyond measure, a beacon of light (really? Is that what you said? Did you ChatGPT it, or what?). 

She tells me how she was hyperventilating when the alarm went off, and when she sat on her bed, she was toda chivada: all drenched in sweat. She brushes her fingers up and down her body, with a contorted face.  Now she’s all big-eyed as she brings the kettle back.

The dream story goes on and on and on. About how she had tried hard to stop and go back to Spanish. But again, and again she would revert to English, as if her own words were gone, as if they were trapped in the coffin with the beacon of light. And then, as you would expect of her, she Googled. She told me all about an article from the BBC on multilingual dreams, and how hers could have been a ‘linguistic anxiety dream’. She is sipping her mate slowly, holding on to it, watching the hollow gourd as if trying to find deep answers by dowsing in the yerba. 

“Porque es como vivir con un pie en cada cachete del culo” Josefina says, the metaphor of an expat life, quite un-Borgesian indeed, of living as if she were standing on a giant butt: one foot on each butt cheek, makes me chuckle. The living not here, not there, and with a looming fear of falling into the crack. Her metaphor lingers heavily between us.

(At times, I know how much I hate speaking. When my LOTE language cannot be tamed, nor hidden. When it bobs up, unrequested as a Spanish-sounding-English. Because it is always there. At home. In songs I sing along. On a t-shirt. In books and books and books I cannot share. In instructions for the blue Anilina Colibri that was never used to dye a tattered shirt into its senses. Over the years I have fought it; pushed it in, scratched it out, painted it over, flattened it down. Nothing worked. Languages can be some stubborn creatures.)

‘Y si un día lo perdemos del todo?’ she says, half a spewed thought, and half a rhetorical question.

And the truth is that I do not know what would happen if suddenly, we could not find ourselves in Spanish anymore. If one day we wake up and we see pieces of rolled ‘Rs’ spread out like starfishes on the ground; or if we see an ñ (please, pronounce eh-nyeh, like you do for Enya, the Irish singer) clearly determined to get rid of its wormy hat in a way never seen before in anything with no arms, only because it wants to fit in. What if, the mourners in a sad, Argentinean funeral start to sway uncomfortably because of an English eulogy without subtitles, and we feel nothing at all.

(Is anyone able to un-dream a dream, Josefina? Can you at least, edit an alien eulogy out of it?) 

The mate is cold now. And maybe tasteless, again. The biggest and lightest Yerba Mate sticks are floating up and I am butchering the most basic mate etiquette turning the bombilla around and around, stirring thoughts and sticks together like a narcotic cocktail.

‘Tengo Pilates a las 5’, Josefina checks her phone. Broken screen; battered cover; battery almost flat. She walks while slipping into a pair of black leggings. Her Pilates mat is next to the door (it lives there, but she forgets it again and again). 

“Te llevo?” she asks me as she frantically searches for her car keys in one of the many miscellaneous, poli-rubro, drawers.

I say no, that I rather walk. I always rather do.

I hum a Seru Giran song that lands me on the 80s (our 80s) and I forget Josefina’s dream. No one died recently, at least no one that I know of. No one I care for. Or maybe someone did die. And maybe in Argentina, they do eulogies now. I don’t know. I will Google it when I get home. 

Not a clue how to say eulogy in Spanish, though. 

A pity, really.

Sevana Ohandjanian

February 27, 2024 / mascara / 0 Comments

Sevana Ohandjanian is a writer, translator and film programmer of Armenian descent, living and writing on Wallumedegal land. Her work can be found in Meanjin, Chogwa, The Suburban Review, Shabby Doll House, The Wrong Quarterly, Tincture, SBS and more. Her unpublished manuscript Black Grass was shortlisted for the 2017 Kill Your Darlings Unpublished Manuscript Prize. Find her online @ichbinsev.

DRIP

The drip started when I came back. Or maybe it had always been there and I just hadn’t seen it. Felt it. You’re always leaking, faulty, dispensing parts of yourself unknowingly. The drip begins and you simply continue. There’s no before or after timestamp. A faucet with the slightest leak, a midnight droplet that gathers on the showerhead and plops down with its weight, a drop in the ocean. But the ocean is a sponge and it soaks everything in. My drip is expelled from what it feeds on.

I wanted her to have become ugly. But she looks the same. Maybe I can’t see her any other way. Standing at the back of an Armenian Saturday school classroom, I watch the children clamouring to get her attention. Miss Lily! Miss Lily! Every child is a remodelling of prepubescent me, enamoured.

When Lily sees me, blood flushes my face, my breath caught. Caught like a 10-year-old being told for the first time, “You’re my best friend”; caught like a girl found out. She smiles, approaches.

She stands beside me during the principal’s announcements. Leans towards me to speak softly.

“It’s been a long time, Eva. Are you married yet?”

“No? I’m sorry. What?”

“I’m engaged.”

“Congratulations?”

“Thanks.” Her bunny rabbit teeth briefly appear when she smiles at me. “I haven’t seen you around here in a long time.”

“I was living in London for a while.”

“I know, I saw the photos on Insta. How come you’re here though? I didn’t think you kept in touch with anyone from school.”

“I’m just doing a favour for one of mum’s friends. They said they needed another teacher.”

“Yeah, Ani had to quit. Her baby’s due in a couple of months.”

“Sure. Right. Then I’m here to replace Ani.”

“Are you back in the suburbs then? With your mum?”

“Yeah. You know, trying to take care of her.”

“And you’re not engaged?”

“No.”

“In a relationship?”

“Nope.”

“Dating any boys?”

“That’s also a no.”

I had arrived airtight, the excommunicated package returned to sender, not a leak to stain the exterior of me. But questions kick my sides into dents. I’m devoid of meaning in this place. Yet I can’t resist the urge to ask.

“So, who are you marrying?”

“You know him actually! He was a year above us–”

The principal calls to me: “Eva, we’re ready to start, let me show you where your classroom is.”

I’m tasked with overlooking the work of three pre-teen girls in the back of a classroom, minimal responsibility while an experienced teacher manages older students emanating static exam preparation energy. The room coils with summer heat, brick-encased sweat, blinding yellow sun glow. The girls kick their feet and rapid-fire questions. We’ve never seen you before Miss, where are you from Miss, how come we don’t know you Miss, did you come to this school too when you were learning Armenian, Miss?

The heat brings the warm sweat drip. Frizzed ends of hair damp at the nape, elbow crease droplet a wet snake. Soles melting into asphalt, fire hits hot, until it swallows feet and turns into statue grey stone. I’m pebble-footed, fog-headed, standing in front of these children, teaching them words I’d forgotten.

Afterwards in the parking lot, my car idles as I avoid the touch of molten metal fixtures against bare flesh. An atomic sizzle between my fingertips and steering wheel, my skin branding and moulding itself to machine. Gathering itself back together, water to jelly to rock. Baby hairs dance around in air conditioning vent choreography, and I see her, striding gracefully towards an electric blue car. Nissan Skyline, Fast & The Furious fantasy for the high school dream boys with fade cuts and bubbling aggression.

The car pulls out, drives by me.

—

There’s nothing to do here besides walk through grass smoked into hay, and stare into people’s backyards. Jumping back when a dog comes barking up a driveway, its snout snarling through the gate. Hearing trucks barrelling down the main highway. Driving for the sake of hearing an album through car speakers, to give it motion. Other peoples’ houses and time-haunted shops, the only places to go.

Western Sydney suburban ennui cushioning my red skin, my squinting eyes, dripping into my vision when shut, all squiggly flashing lines. I can’t leave it. I’ve taken it with me to every city I’ve lived in. An empty street is home even if it’s hollow.

The shopping village that still holds the dirty yellow glow of too-low lighting and too-dark corners. Butcher meat stink pulses, bakery loaves expand in their racks, the newsagency ceiling fan whirrs dust over untouched magazine covers.

In the unnaturally bright grocers, I’m slumped over a shopping trolley in the produce section, eyeing off the fruit, willing light to disperse me amongst the blood red apples.

A hand on my shoulder brings me back, collecting and rearranging me. Of course she’s here. Actualised from my mind where she’s found residence since I saw her in the classroom a week ago.

Carrying a shopping basket like a handbag in the crook of her elbow, she is what activewear ads convince me I could be: slimmer, fitter, happier, wearing leggings to the shops after the gym session. She exudes a glow that highlights my dullness.

She’s talking to me but I’m still the pillow crease from the morning, blue light shining in my face. My finger surfing over my phone screen at speed with a tender touch, cautious voyeurism. She is amalgamating before my eyes: crucifixes, gold and silver, shiny helium anniversary balloons, lace and chiffon. His pink nose filtered to snowy white, tight shining faces dripped together and melted, pushed in so close as if to pull apart would tear the conjoined sinew.

She’s inviting me to a party in her backyard. As I agree, I’m thinking of excuses not to go.

—

I have been here before or I haven’t. Down cul de sacs lined with palms, into townhouse driveways signposted with identical beige postboxes. Two years of sucking in smog and suffocating sound is compacted into the back of my mind, an already othered memory.

The backyard grips me by the neck, thrusts me face-first into nostalgia. Plastic white chair-seated men, hookah pipe passes, women in constant motion to buckle a trestle table with food.

This is every backyard from high school house parties when we’d stand around, flip phones grasped like prizes, being fed alcohol by parents who didn’t care for local laws. The so-small world looking remarkably wide in a fenced-in, half-concrete yard.

He’s not beside Lily, he’s amongst the white chair men. Legs spread, possessive eyes, shisha in hand. Déjà vu so strong I’m convinced he hasn’t moved an inch since 2004. His nose the same ruddy pink as that hot humid day, when I had squirted my water bottle at him while we waited to climb into the school bus. The second last day of school. Giggling to coax male fury off the ledge when he said, “I’ll get you for that”.

My skin pink the next day walking down the highway home, water dripping from hair and hem timed with shivers. Truck drivers honking at my now transparent cotton sports uniform. My ears echoing the smack of litre on litre pouring over my head. Ice cold shivers from frozen water bottles, then lukewarm waterfalls from orange juice-stained canisters. His deep laugh slicing through the cascade.

Now, a bead of sweat tickles down my back. I plant myself in a corner, let my sandaled feet brush grass. Sinking myself in deep, deep enough to become a nutrient for the soil, enough that I might fertilise and dissolve. As I watch him watch her, I know when she is watching me.

There’s small talk and a barbecue, drinks and cigarettes, heels poking holes into garden grass. My eye can’t leave the white chair corner, even while three ex-classmates come to interrogate me. They’re trying to strike gossip gold to take home tonight. Lily joins and stands across from me, that beaming warmth enveloping.

“Having fun?” she interrupts the conversation to ask me.

“Yeah, thanks for inviting me”.

“Of course. You should come to the wedding too, maybe you can meet a nice Armenian guy, make your mum proud.”
She laughs, a delicate thing. How is it so intimate yet the furthest thing from close. A reminder that the space is so vast between us, it is practically solid.

I move closer to Lily as someone takes a drum out, slapping a rhythm that draws people into hand-held circles. An unrushed dance, hands grasped with strangers, two steps forward and one back. A movement that should be in my feet already, a genetic predetermination. She’s the centre point of it, like a fountain timed to music, her hair splaying out, her body spinning, her arms elegantly shaping in the air. When our eyes meet briefly, my smile is second nature. I feel stripped down, heart stuck in throat. Melted as if to expose the centre of myself.

She is the person they sing about in the song, and I’m the person who dances to it.

—

Heat has a personality of its own. It demands. Craves the attention of all your senses. Heat sticks in your throat, it inflates humid into the lungs, it sinks into pores and forces your insides out.

I stand under the lazy ceiling fan in the classroom, in another lesson that has blurred into the weeks preceding it. Saturday mornings of burning sunlight and irritable children desperate to be elsewhere. Lily in the morning gathering, hearing her voice ring out an octave higher than the students during the national anthem. Afternoons of parking lot small talk, disappearing into cars and separate worlds.

The fabric on my skin is becoming one with me. Cotton tendrils sneak into microscopic pores, latching onto cells and choke-holding them until shirt is body and body is shirt. I want to flatpack myself. Ship myself back across oceans, until all that falls on me are snowflakes turning water, until my hair is drenched and my breath is tangible fog.

Once the bell has rung, I turn off the lights and stand in empty midday darkness. The stale air, the flecks of dust, the beige brownness of it all. I was never afforded silence in this space. Even now, I can feel the squeeze of time against me. Siren songing me into the past, into a safety that regresses and reidentifies.

Lily is sitting on a bench outside the school gates when I approach her. A backpack sat at her feet, she types speedily on her phone and doesn’t look up until I’m sat beside her.

“Did you have a good day today?” she asks, looking up from her phone, eyes directly on me.

“Same same really. I don’t know if I’m actually helping these kids learn anything.”

“I’m sure you are. They’re good kids.”

“Do you need a ride?”

“No, Sako will be here soon. We’re going to get a late lunch.”

The sun is bearing down on my unprotected face, marking its spot red. The drip is puddling around me, forming a lake on which I’m drifting. When was the last time we sat so close.

Back when she was ankle socks and me regular-length folded and pushed down. Back of the school bus giggles, we’d gotten lucky that the older kids let us sit there. We felt older than our 12 years with the privilege of hiding in the corner, huddled close. Grease of morning margarine sandwiches still on our lips, discarded foil crunching beneath our feet. She told me her underwear was black. Everything I wore underneath was a virginal white. Show don’t tell, we lifted skirts, reached across and under as if to confirm that the differences between us ended at the colour of our underwear. A Year 10 girl turned around to look at us and we knew somehow this wasn’t allowed.

We’re in a cone of cool silence now. The heat is away, the drip has stopped. Like an ice cube down the back of the shirt, there is something kinetic here. Something that wants to burst out of my pores and slide over the seat. Where are the lines drawn on our bodies now, that didn’t exist then.

“Do you remember those bus rides we’d have to take here every day?” My voice is not my own. It’s liquid turned sound, moved its way from stomach to trachea and out.

“They took so long! How did we even do it. They were so boring.”

“I liked them.” Me and you. Shoulder to shoulder, arm to arm, leg to leg, knee to knee. Gossip and giggles, a level playing field.

“Sako used to ride on that bus too, you know? He said he had a crush on me even back then”. Glimmering eyes, bunny teeth, the child peeking out of the adult. “But he never did anything about it.”

A car honks and the sun hits my eyes, firing down my face. She walks away, a gentle wave, a slide in and shut door.

I drip away in a sun melt. Until I can fall from the bench in droplets, slink my way down the gutter, foist myself into the drains. Let myself be carried to the dam, rushed alongside the drips of others, funnelled into drains mapping our suburban yellow underground. Until I slip down her tap, into her glass, and am entirely consumed.

A.D. John

January 26, 2024 / mascara / 0 Comments

A. D. John is a Wiradjuri writer residing on Gadigal land. He is a recipient of the 2023 Penguin Random House “Write It” Fellowship and the 2023 Writing NSW Diverse Writers Mentorship with World Fantasy Award finalist Eugen Bacon. He is currently studying for an MA in creative writing at the University of Sydney.

My Blood, Your Blood

Beyond the distant scrub on a strangled ridge, rhythmic rifle fire snapped and cracked – the powder smoke lifting like a delicate veil and dispersing as it cleared a dense regiment of parched saplings. Jimmy heaved the saddle onto the officer’s horse as another volley of shots pierced the damp evening air. He watched as the men around him flinched. 

“Jimmy,” a white officer called from his seat near a smouldering fire. “You see them boy?”

Jimmy shook his head. “Nah boss, can’t see a thing in this light.”

The officer scratched at his shabby beard, nodded and went back to stoking his piteous heap of embers. 

It was a lie. Jimmy could see the soldiers perfectly but was in no mood to play “spot the white fullah.” He secured the saddle and started with the bridling. 

They called him Jimmy Jackson. That’s how he introduced himself around camp and to his troop, even though he hated the name. It was a white fullah’s name, and it didn’t fit. Whenever he got the chance, he would introduce himself with the name his mother gave him – Mugi. The night before her son was born, she dreamed of birthing an eaglehawk and took that as a sign, dubbing him accordingly. Like the formidable raptor of his name’s sake, Mugi had the gift of sight. Put a jag-spear, knife, or rifle in his hand and he’d find his mark – sometimes from hundreds of metres away. 

His sight wasn’t limited to hunting. 

Mugi could cast visions of the abstract and slip into a place most other folk couldn’t. He’d soar above the hushed paddocks and the dense, suffocating scrub bordering their perimeters, rushing high over the magnificence of gumtrees. From up yonder, he took in everything. His mind’s eye traversed the expansive, sapphire skies tangled with wisps of cloud and surveyed the ravaged landscape below. 

He was all at once untethered up there in the eternal blue, but a slave chained mercilessly to the earth. Mugi would never mention the Dreaming to the white fullahs. He could only imagine they’d hack off his head or burn him alive. These men only believed in the Bible and that was that. 

Every so often, Lieutenant Wilson would be full of the spirit, rum or a mixture, and he’d limp up onto a discarded supply crate and begin spitting verses from his tattered St James Bible. There he’d be, unsteady in his boots, swaying and gabbling, fighting to keep his eyes from rolling back into his skull, as spittle caught in the nest of hair around his mouth. He’d speak of the end of days and Mugi wondered if those times had already come for his lot.

“Watcha doing?” A voice called from behind him.

Mugi turned to see Paul standing next to an open tent, its flaps whipping and snapping in the wind.

Paul was Koori as well, but no one knew his real name. He was tall, lanky yet strong. His skin stretched taut across his face and betrayed a menacing intent when he smiled – like he was now.

“I’m saddling the horse for the Lieutenant.”

“Which?” Paul’s eyes squinted into slits. He spat a peach seed that landed not far from Mugi’s boots.

“Daniels.”

“Uh huh, goin’ get it done then.” 

Paul buttoned his jacket and marched into the open tent. 

*

Mugi had noticed Paul striding through the camp from time to time as if he owned the place – like he was one of the white fullahs. This was his first interaction with the man, and it went as well as he imagined. The other Kooris nicknamed Paul “the White Dog”. Stories about him spread through the troop quicker than any cold or flu. These weren’t the type of tales Mugi would have recounted to his nephew back home. Rumours were that Paul played his part in desecrating a whole mob close by. The mob were charged with stealing cattle – so the settlers said. 

Other Kooris told Mugi that Paul had unsheathed his sabre during the battle and hacked at limbs and sheared off heads, all the while grinning that maniac grin of his. Mugi had seen enough bloodshed to last him an eternity. He could feel the malevolence of the mission weigh damp and heavy on his spirit. 

Mugi and his unit were sent to arrest the warrior Dawarang, whose mob was accused of disturbing the day-to-day lives of the nearby settlement. Mugi knew what it meant when white fullahs said “arrest.” Dawarang and his mob’s so-called crimes were miniscule to start with. Snatching a few chickens here, some pigs there. When cattle began to vanish, the settlers called in a local regiment of soldiers. 

Then there was the clash and the mob speared a few of the soldiers, one fatally. This was the story that the white fullahs drilled into their heads along the dusty trails all the way from Wagga Wagga. A young Koori officer named Dirru spread rumours that the real reason they (the white men) wanted Dawarang and his mob gone had less to do with protecting settlers and more to do with panning for gold. 

*

Mugi had spotted unfamiliar faces mulling around the creek beds with all sorts of equipment – he’d never had the chance to stand still long enough to gander at what they were up to. He also noticed they were clearing the forests slowly, two or three trees at a time. Mugi was beginning to agree with Dirru. There was foulness in the air, and he wanted to know which direction it was blowing in from. 

Mugi didn’t want to fight anymore. He wanted to go home. He wanted to hunt, cook damper and brew billy tea with his nephew. This wasn’t his nation. This was some other mob’s and now he was here trying to pry it away on behalf of these white bastards. 

He hated the way the white fullahs strode around like they had a right to it all – like they were some kind of gods. The only thing godlike about them was their opinion of themselves. He’d seen them bleed just like his mob. They weren’t anything ethereal. Just blood and bone like anyone else. Mugi wasn’t sure what he despised most: the white dog’s greed or their ignorance. They wanted to take, conquer and rape the land. Like it was a prize to be won. They had their heads so far up their own arses they didn’t realise how deluded they truly were. The land wouldn’t allow itself to be conquered. It wasn’t some fruit that sat heavy and plump on the lowest limbs of a tree. It was as harsh as it was beautiful, and it could show you who was really in charge if you were stupid enough to give it a good hard poke. 

Mugi closed his eyes so he could recalibrate. He was doing this for his sister and her boy back home.  That’s why he was here, no other reason he could think of. 

After they came in and stole the land from his people, they sold it back to them. They called it civilisation, but Mugi couldn’t find the civility in anything they were doing. The only white folk he gave a good goddamn about were the Irish. They were the only ones that seemed to cop it as sweet as the Kooris did. Poor bastards – all of them – poor, poor bastards. His lot and theirs. 

Mugi stood there with his eyes closed. The breeze lapped sweat from his cheeks. He imagined peeking through the kitchen window of his sister’s house. Her and the boy would be making damper or soda bread and laughing and gently elbowing each other. A fire blazed somewhere and it cast a long shadow that moved back and forth like someone pacing. He saw her, in his mind’s eye, the woman from the creek. 

Then he remembered he did have other reasons for being out here.

*

At night Mugi would sneak away. He crept past the tents and the officers snoring like smokestacks of old locomotives. He stayed low to the ground and waded through waist-high grass. He dove into the deep, cool shadows of the towering gum trees. He sprinted, hard, into the heart of the bush. His legs burning and his chest heaving until he reached the creek.

Until he reached her.

*

Mugi rounded a clump of tents. As he crept past the last one, he heard Captain Miller conversing with Lieutenant Daniels. The night had truly settled over the camp now and he crouched down behind a stack of logs, assured that the darkness would shroud him from the camp’s collection of paranoid eyes. 

“I don’t know how they know we’re coming. It’s like someone is giving us up.” Captain Miller’s voice was distinct—rough and deep like a rockslide in a quarry.

“Yes sir. It is quite perplexing,” Daniels said.

“I’m glad to hear you’re perplexed, Lieutenant. It shows you care. I was beginning to think you wanted to tend the land and raise cattle here.”
“Sir?”

“We should have dispatched this Dawarang fellow weeks ago and been back home with our wives and children. I was beginning to think you liked it out here so much, you wanted to stay.”

Mugi listened as Daniel’s cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, sir, I am not following.”

“If you truly hated the heat and the stink and the general sense of melancholy this place imposes on one, really felt it on a day-to-day basis, I’d have thought you’d do everything in your power to achieve your objective?”

“Yes, sir I –”

“I don’t want to hear any more words from you Daniels. I want action. You hear me? Action.”

“Yes, sir,” Daniels said again.

“Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags bloody full, sir. Just find the bastard, understood?”

There was the loud sharp click as Daniel’s snapped the heels of his boots together and then – silence.

Mugi waited in the shadows, waited for the tent flaps to open and the light to spill out and a dejected Daniels to slink past. A few seconds and nothing. Mugi froze as he heard hurrying boots clomping towards him. He turned to see Daniels striding for him, the weight of his footsteps kicking up plumes of dust. He must have exited Miller’s tent from the rear.

“You, there. What the hell are you up to?” 

Daniels stood over Mugi – a looming storm cloud.

Mugi began to gather logs from the pile and bundle them into his arms. He stood so he was face-to-face with the lieutenant.

“Sorry, sir, I’m just collecting wood for the fire.”
Daniels looked him up and down, his thin lips curling into a sneer.

“Well bloody hurry up then will you. Get back to your tent officer. I’m imposing a curfew tonight.”

Mugi saluted, almost dropping some of the logs. Daniels didn’t break eye contact until he’d stomped off behind one of the tents. 

*

Mugi knew that when a curfew was imposed, the white fullahs employed an extra level of vigilance. They’d have sentries strewn all around camp. Most officers who had the pleasure of a night shift were already exhausted and it was inevitable that they’d nod off – it was just a matter of time. Then there was the lackies, like Paul, who loved to catch a dissenter just so his white masters would pat his head and say “good boy.”

*

The horse Mugi had saddled earlier was still tied to the log where he’d left him. No officer had bothered to investigate why one of the horses wasn’t back in the stable with the rest, or why it was still wearing a saddle.

Mugi stalked his way toward the animal. The horse dug at the dirt with its hoof and whinnied when it saw him approach. 

“Shhh, ya dumb bugger,” Mugi said.

The horse flicked it’s head up and down and started pulling at the rope clipped to its bridal. Mugi reached the animal and stroked its mane, until it stopped jerking.

A calm fell over beast. 

Mugi spotted one of the sentries standing in the paddock only a few meters away. Yawning, the officer gazed up at the luminous stars that exploded across the canvas of the night sky.

Mugi searched around in the dust. He stood once he found it, a small round stone. He ran his fingers over the rock’s smooth edges and then lined up his target. 

 “Sorry, Brother,” he said. He wound back his arm and snapped it forward in a fast whip. 

The stone cut through the cool night air and struck the distracted sentry on the back of the skull. He didn’t want to cave the man’s head in – just blow out his lights. 

Mugi watched the man’s knees buckle and his whole body seemed to crumple in on itself and the tall grass swallowed him.

The sentry now asleep—probably the deepest he’d had since being deployed—Mugi didn’t waste any time. He knew there’d be more sentries milling about and didn’t think there’d be enough rocks for all of them. 

He led the horse through the long grass, making sure to crouch down and stay out of sight. He appreciated the symphony of insects. Crickets and frogs and the slow buzz of cicadas. He reached the middle of the clearing when a bat screeched and swooped overhead. 

Mugi felt his heart slide into his throat and stood frozen until he was able to regain his composure and push on. As he reached the deep, elongated shadows of the tree line, he glanced up at the sky. He could see why the sentry had been so enraptured. Thousands of jewels burned through the blackness, their sharp trails of light reaching down toward him. 

Mugi sunk into the darkness of the thick bushland, and he and the horse clambered over the dense scrub and fallen branches. They crept carefully through the brush until he could no longer smell the whispers of the campfire. He then mounted the horse and charged towards the creek.

He heard the creek before he saw it. The burbling of tannin-stained water trickling over the pock ridden stones that cut the bed of water in two. Mugi jumped from the horse and tied it to a nearby tree branch. He went on foot until he reached the creek bed, lit by the radiance of the full moon. 

She was there. 

The woman knelt by the bank, her hands cutting circles in the water, humming an unfamiliar tune. She turned ever so slowly, and her onyx eyes caught his in their rapture. Mugi felt his heart soar. No matter how many times he saw her, he swore she was the most beautiful vision. She was the ethereal shimmer of the moonlight.  Her name was Alinta, a name that meant fire or flame, he couldn’t remember which. The woman rose and floated towards him.

Mugi didn’t move – couldn’t move. 

Alinta threw her slender arms around his neck. Mugi felt the chill of her flesh, which soothed him. He slipped one arm around the small of her back and pulled her body tightly against his. Eyes shut, two white hot mouths heat seeking, soft wet lips melting together. It took everything Mugi had to breakaway away from the ache of her want.  

“We don’t have much time,” Mugi said. “Those dogs mean business this time. You must warn Dawarang. You must tell him to leave this place.”

Alinta smiled, and she let go of Mugi.

“He can’t leave this place. It’s not that easy. This place owns him. Needs him.”

“I’ve seen what these bastards are capable of. They’ll burn this place. They’ll take it all.” Mugi stood closer to Alinta and took a handful of her soft curls, spinning them around his fingers.

“It’s getting harder to leave,” he said. “What if I can’t tell you when they’re coming for yas?

Alinta swatted away his hand and smiled again. 

“Let them come, let them see what happens.”

There was a sharp crack as a heavy footstep splintered a branch, then a metallic click. Mugi and Alinta turned to see Paul, the White Dog, who had thumbed back the hammer of his rifle.

“We’re already ’ere.” He smiled that sadistic grin of his and levelled the weapon at Mugi’s chest and pulled the trigger. 

Mugi felt the impact snatch the breath from his lungs and the creeping heat of the wound slowly enveloped his entire body. He fell backwards onto the soft wet earth of the creek and tried to cough up the torrent of blood lurching through his windpipe. He waited to die, waited for Alinta to scream but instead thought he saw her laughing. 

“What are you smiling at ya daft bitch,” Paul said as he began to slide the rifle’s trigger back.

What happened next, Mugi thought was conjured from the dying embers of his imagination. 

The trees seemed to move. Not like they did in the wind. They appeared to take steps. Their roots tore free from the ground dredging up dirt and dead leaves. They circled Paul like a pack of ravenous dingos. Their skeletal branches tore at his clothes, grabbed at his arms and he dropped the rifle. 

He screamed as angry limbs hoisted him high into the air and, as if they’d practiced it a thousand times before, they wrenched his arms and legs from their sockets simultaneously. His body broke and shuddered violently. Paul’s eyes were wide and Mugi thought they’d burst but they grew dim and closed. His mouth went slack and hung open in a frozen twisted howl.

Alinta kneeled and ran her hand over Mugi’s chest, slick with blood. Her soft caress stole his mind from thoughts of death that swarmed like flies.

Those eyes locked onto his and she grinned.

“See,” she said. “Let them come.”