Hope Farm Read online

  ‘Ah ha!’ yelled Ian, hopping on the spot. ‘Down you go!’

  A horrible, tipping sensation came over me, worse than the bewilderment it replaced. I turned and ran, back between the twin trees and down the hill, over the bridge and along the other side of the creek. There was a place where the bush grew thickly, and I pushed my way in, far enough that I was well hidden from the path. The growth was so tight I couldn’t even squat down, and I stood with the book held to my chest, my heart thundering. It was a trap. By covering the hole with something — paper or a sheet of fabric — and then arranging dirt and bits of grass and twigs over it so it was indistinguishable from the surrounding ground, he had made a trap. I tried to lick my lips; my mouth was dry. Ian’s voice hammered in my ears: Down you go!

  After that it wasn’t possible to completely ignore the presence of the shaft. When we were together, embroiled in some activity — then I could forget. But whenever he didn’t show up at the creek bank, I couldn’t help but know where he most likely was instead, and wonder what he might be doing. Why would you make a trap like that, so real and deadly? Who was it he imagined breaking through that carefully constructed seal, and dropping — Down you go! — into the dark? And when we saw each other again after these absences, there was a strangeness there, and I found myself watching his face carefully.

  Sometimes we would meet on the path and it would be obvious he was on his way back from the shaft, and something in the determined, breezy nod and greeting he gave made my chest feel squeezed. It was the same sad, adult feeling I got whenever I felt the growing lumps behind my nipples, or thought about getting my period — of something having been lost. Of unwilling acceptance. Of compromise.

  Mira had a taxi waiting. The house was in a suburb I didnt know, Id only ever been in the city. By the time we got there the baby was hungry and crying. Some women were waiting, they took me to a room and put me in a bed on the floor and I lay back against pillows, it had been a week since the birth but still I was sore. An older woman with dark skin and acne scars knelt beside me. Shes a midwife said Mira, She knows all about babies. Feed, feed said the midwife. I pulled at my stupid tent dress and tried to balance the baby against my knees. The midwife helped me take the dress off and put a long shawl thing round my shoulders. Everything smelled smoky and foreign. The baby snorted her head against me. The midwife put her palm to the back of the tiny head and with the other hand pinched me quickly in to the right shape, I got such a surprise I yelped and then I felt that feeling that little hungry strong mouth and for once it hardly hurt. See? said the midwife and grinned.

  The next morning Mira came to see me. She was back in her own clothes and had her hair in plaits again. I tried to say thank you to her for all her help but she put her hand up to stop me. We do what is right she said. Now your parents will be worried, I think you should ring them and let them know youre safe. She helped me out to the phone in the hallway. Who did you say? said my mother. Who are these people? I told her again, I said the name slowly and clearly, I had nothing to hide. I heard her tell my father Its them the ones I told you about from the park. Then she said to me You go straight back to the hospital now, its not too late. No I said, Im not going to do that Ive made my decision. My mother was quiet I could hear her breathing then she hung up the phone.

  ‘Is she going to have a baby soon?’

  It was morning, and Jindi had waylaid me as I came out of the toilet.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Her.’ She pointed a dirty finger at Ishtar’s outline in the kitchen window.

  ‘Ishtar?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What makes you think she’s going to have a baby?’

  ‘Miller told me.’

  ‘What?’ I bent to see her face, which seemed engorged with importance. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I was helping him with the digging and she brought out a drink for him. I didn’t get any, but I didn’t mind, I think it was coffee or something yuck.’ She paused, luxuriating in a long moment of thoughtfulness. ‘Or maybe it was a cup of beer. Beer is really horrible. I like the foam, but the underneath is —’

  ‘Jindi!’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Come on. What did he say about Ishtar?’

  ‘Oh.’ She pursed her lips and gazed off somewhere over my shoulder. ‘I can’t remember now.’

  I straightened and began to push past her. ‘Never mind,’ I said, ‘I’ll find out some other —’

  ‘No, no — wait!’ She grabbed my wrist. ‘I can remember — I just remembered.’

  I stopped. ‘Okay then — quick.’

  She kept hold of me. ‘I was helping him and Ishtar brought the drink and then she went back inside and Miller said, “She is my woman and just like I plant these seeds to grow food for us to eat I will plant my own seed in her.”’ She grinned. ‘And you know what that means, don’t you?’

  I observed Ishtar for signs of swelling, but her stomach stayed flat. She was different though. Still busy — always busy — but something had changed, and as I watched her move through her endless cycle of chores I realised that the brightness was missing from her. She had settled; her movements were now more efficient than eager.

  ‘What we are doing here,’ boomed Miller, pacing in front of the fire, ‘just by being alive and present in our bodies, close to the earth, letting the elements in — the wind, the rain — welcoming them, allowing them to touch us, this is profoundly subversive.’

  ‘Yeah,’ came a feeble cry from the gloom. ‘Right on.’

  I looked for Ishtar, for the almost-undetectable signs of pleasure at the corners of her mouth, but when I found her face in the flickering light, it had the emptiness of someone waiting for something to be over.

  Then I heard them arguing one night, outside, on the stretch of ground between the back of the toilet and the hill, where the bath stood. Their voices slipped through the gaps in the tin over my head as I shivered on the wooden toilet seat, trying not to breathe the smell.

  ‘What do we have,’ Miller said, ‘if not trust?’

  ‘Well, how long then?’

  ‘A week. Maybe even less. I have to help. It’s an obligation. I know you understand.’

  Ishtar clicked her tongue. ‘I didn’t mean how long will you be gone. I meant how long till I can have my money back.’

  Miller made a long sound, part laugh, part exhalation, low and weary. ‘Money? Really? Ishtar. My love. You disappoint me.’

  There was a long silence, and then when she spoke again Ishtar’s voice had completely changed. It wavered, weak as a child’s. ‘Well, it was my money — and you said …’

  Miller spoke in a teasing purr. ‘If you care so much, my sweet lady, I will bring it when I return. I will repay you, and with interest. All will be settled and square.’ His voice lowered and grew slightly muffled. ‘And then you’ll stop taking those dreadful pills, won’t you.’

  This was followed by loud breathing and kissing sounds. I wanted to sneak off but was afraid they’d notice me if I moved. They sounded very close, just on the other side of the bricks.

  He went away. The next morning, early for him, throwing a canvas bag — roughly packed, clothes showing at the unzipped opening — into the back of the brown station wagon. He kissed Ishtar, as I watched furtively from a corner of the front porch. He kissed her for a long time, his bushy beard seeming to eat up her face, then he stood with one large hand at the back of her head, his forehead pressed to hers, whispering. Ishtar didn’t answer. But she dipped her chin, once, twice, in nods that to me looked reluctantly obedient.

  When the car had reached the top of the slope and turned out onto the dirt road, she stood for a long time staring after it. She had her arms folded but she didn’t look strong or tough like Val, whose crossed arms as she rested a hip on the edge of the sink made me think of words like buttress
and fortress; nor were they like Willow’s when she locked them under her heavy breasts, which had a comfortable appearance, like the closed wings of a roosting chicken. Ishtar’s hands gripped the upper sleeves of her own jumper as if underneath was a structure that had not been fitted together properly, an unsteady frame that might collapse at any moment.

  The midwife helped me, she brought me nappies and showed me how to change them and wash them. I didnt have any clothes but they gave me some light silk things like they all wore. The baby didnt have any thing apart from the little hospital nightie but the midwife showed me how to wrap her up in cotton cloths. It was summer any way so she didnt need clothes realy. I had that room to myself with the bed on the floor and apart from going to the toilet I stayed there for what felt like a long time two weeks maybe. The midwife visited every day for a while and then she stopped coming so often. Other people brought me food and sat with me and held the baby. Nobody spoke realy, they were all very quiet and still but they smiled. They brought me books to read but I just looked at the pictures mostly I wasnt supposed to learn from them they were just to keep me entertained. In some of them the drawings were very dramatic, people with animal parts a donkeys head the tail of a snake a man bursting out of a wolfs body with blood splashing. The pages were thin and grainy feeling. Through the open window I could smell frangipani. My old life seemed so far away already, when I got up and felt my full breasts under the floating silk dress and looked down at the baby sleeping on the bed I felt like a different person. I moved slowly the way the others in the house did I spoke in a gentle quiet voice like they did. In the small bathroom mirror I smoothed my hair with my hands parting it in the middle feeling it hang around my face. Mira was the house mother she did all the shopping and cooking and she was always around. There were others who lived there, about twelve people, men and women but they went out most days. Then in the evenings there was this thing called satsang in the living room. They asked me to join in after the first week, they said of course I could bring the baby. There were no couches or chairs and only one bookshelf and a table with candles and flowers and fruit on it and a photo in a frame of a smiling dark skinned man with glasses. Everyone was there and usually extra people too, teachers in robes to give talks and lead us in meditation and yoga. We all sat cross legged on the floor. It was very quiet. I didnt know the words of the chants but after the first time Mira gave me a booklet with them in it and the meanings in English and also stuff about the man in the photo, what he taught and the things he had done. The typing was small and reading was so hard for me any way I skipped most of it but from what I could tell he was a nice person, he believed in love and peace. I did try to learn the mantras so I could join in, it was slow with my reading, I mostly learned from just listening at satsang. At first I felt embarassed and kept my voice quiet but after a while it was just automatic and my voice seemed to blend with the others without me even thinking about it. I liked satsang, everyone sitting so close it was like the calm collected in a pool around us and you could feel how deep it was. The baby lay across my lap and slept.

  ‘What,’ said Val, spilling out the contents of the kitty tin onto the table, ‘none at all?’ With brisk fingers she clicked coins on the scarred tabletop, swept a pile into her hand. ‘With all those shifts you’ve been doing?’

  ‘I’ll have to owe you. Till next week, when I get my pay.’ Ishtar’s voice was low and cool, but she had turned her back, was hiding herself in the busyness of wiping the pots stacked on the draining board, bending to put them in the cupboard.

  Val, a wedge of folded hessian shopping bags under one arm, tipped the coins into a pouch. ‘You won’t get anything back from a bloke like him,’ she said, in a voice much gentler than her usual one. Then she sniffed and turned to the door. ‘But I expect you know that.’

  Jindi was waiting when I came out of the toilet.

  ‘When is Miller coming home?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Maybe he’s not coming back. Does that mean you and your mum will go, too?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She butted against me. ‘Can’t you stay?’ Her cold fingers tried to worm themselves into my pocket, where my own hand was.

  Miller’s runaway pumpkin plant sighed and rustled its fibrous stems against the wall of the shed. In all its vast, undulating carpet of green not one orange bloom was visible.

  I dug my hands deeper into my pockets, angling myself away from Jindi. A lash of wind brought hot, unexpected tears into my eyes.

  ‘Can’t you stay, Silver?’

  Ishtar passed us, walking from the house to the mud-brick building. Her stride was even; her upright back, as she entered the dark doorway, inscrutable as ever.

  ‘Silver?’

  A jet of anger rushed up in me and I pushed past, knocking her. ‘I don’t know!’ I made for the house, not looking round. ‘I don’t know everything that’s going to happen!’

  After school I raced into the bush and down to the creek, through showers of wattle blooms, to submit to Ian and his bossiness.

  ‘Now you run to the bridge, and grab them,’ he ordered, getting ready to toss an armload of balls into the water. ‘Go. And make sure you remember the sequence they come through in. Here, write it down.’ Passing me a chewed pencil and a scrap of paper. ‘Okay. Be gone, gypsy girl. I’ll count to ten and then I’ll chuck them.’

  Back and forth I ran, welcoming the scratches of twigs and leaves, keeping my heart racing, my breaths full and busy in my chest. I gave myself over to it: to the chill rising from the ground, the mossy, wet smells, the secret black soil where the smallest plants sent hair-like roots too fragile to touch. To the endless onward hurtle of the creek, the rip of birdcalls, the sting of the air, the creak and whisper of the canopy above and the patient, sturdy trunks below.

  Willingly I yielded to the demands of Ian’s repetitious games and lengthy readings, animated lectures on apertures and lenses, f-stops and film speeds. Gratefully I sank into my role as audience, sidekick, player of bit parts, photographer’s assistant. The photography sessions were better than the play readings, because I didn’t have to speak. Unable to see what he saw through the viewfinder — a perfect composition of clouds, or bracken fronds, or swirl of water around domed peaks of rocks — I nonetheless stood, dutiful and happily vacant of thought, casting my shadow just where he needed it, or holding a piece of white paper below or to one side of the camera’s lens.

  A car came along the road and we raced to get under the bridge. Breathing the metallic, sunless air, stones jabbing my shoulder blades, I pressed down on the wild fear churning low in my belly as the approaching growl widened and the timbers overhead began to tremble. On it came, the ruthless descent of tyres, the terrifying roar of sound; the vortex that took everything else away, that shook me empty and left me licking the chalky dust from my lips, grinning with a vast, brainless joy.

  She was so beautiful I could look at her for hours and kiss her and smell her skin. When the others said how beautiful she was I felt so proud and strong I couldnt believe she was mine, I was her mother all she had in the world and I had fought to keep her. I didnt show how I felt though that wasnt what these people did, you couldnt talk about yourself or be proud or vain. Once or twice I imagined showing her to my father and Linda and even my mother too, I thought if they saw her surely they would love her and understand. I did try to ring again one more time but as soon as she heard my voice my mother hung up. So I didnt think about my parents after that, it wasnt hard because the baby filled everything and she belonged to this new life she was what made me who I was now. I thought about names. Everybody in the house had strange names, some were lovely. Mira, Kali, Rani, Skye. There was a woman called Rainbow. Some of the men had more normal names, Ronnie and David but there were also Kabir and Jasper and Jaskaran. Lying on my bed I turned the thin pages of the books, I looked at the ca
ptions and whispered the names to myself. One time the phone rang and I was right there in the hallway and nobody else was around so I answered it. Someone asked for Kate. I hadnt met any one with that name. Then Mira came out of the kitchen. Who do they want? she said. Oh they mean Kali, shes not here ask if you can take a message. Later I watched Kali during satsang sitting tall with her auburn hair and face all peaceful, it was hard to believe she could ever have been a Kate. Mira brought me some papers in a long clean envelope, they were for the registration of birth. I looked at them and my reading was even worse than usual, all I saw was lines of type and spaces. My hands shook. Please will you help me? I said. Mira was folding laundry, she stopped and set everything carefully aside she did all tasks like that never rushing. She took me to the kitchen and sat down, I sat beside her with the baby in my arms. Mira gave me a pen. Just put our address she said and told it to me. She had to say it four times for me to get it right. Then she tapped her finger where it asked for the fathers name and said You can put Unknown if you think thats best. I did it, full of shame but Miras face was the same as always, still and not judging. What about the babys name? she said. Have you thought of one? I felt embarassed, I wrote it down without saying it out loud, I did it so carefully making the letters neat and checked it over and it looked so bold there written for the first time. Mira leaned across to see. Her voice changed then, Oh now that is just perfect she said and I smiled and felt my face get hot. She took the paper and folded it, put it in an envelope that already had a stamp and the address on it. Would you like to post it yourself? she said, The post box is just at the corner of the street. Yes I said. Wait a moment then. She went out and came back with a long orange cloth. Hold her there she said, Close to your chest, and she used the cloth to bind the baby to me. I thought about the woman in the park that day with her baby tied on. You can let go, you can have your arms free said Mira and I took them away, I wasnt sure at first but then I felt how firmly the cloth was tied and I relaxed. Out side, the sun glared. I looked down but the baby had her head tucked in her little fists up by her face, sleeping and peaceful. I walked along with the letter in my hand feeling the swish of my long skirt. An old lady came the other way and I saw her run her eyes over me my clothes and the baby tied on, the leather sandals Mira had given me. She was about to look away but I caught her eye and smiled. Hello I said. Oh hello dear she said. She looked confused. I swished by, still smiling. She had never seen any one like me before. Later when Id come back Mira said And have you thought of a name for yourself? I realised then that none of them had ever asked my name and not even Mira who knew what it was had called me by it. At first I wasnt sure what she meant but then I remembered Kali who used to be Kate and then a picture from one of the books came in to my mind of a goddess with a sword and a bow and arrows standing with one foot on the back of a lion. Ishtar I said. Mira took my hands. Ishtar. Welcome. She kissed my cheek.