Calypso Summer (19 page)

‘Turn around,' Linda said, sitting with Mum and all the other women. ‘Give us a good look.' I gammon spun around like a model.

Evelyn said, ‘Who recks?' when she saw my name and the number one on the back.

Run and Jamie, with beers in their hands, gave me the thumbs up. Clare said, ‘Look what Calypso got me,' as she flashed her jewellery for the women to see. Evelyn held back from telling Clare that she'd helped me pick the necklace and earrings out. Frankie handed me my beer and I took another little sip, and thought about wearing my new top at the cricket.

Even though he had plenty of chances, Run didn't get past smiling at Cleo. He didn't make an attempt even though Jamie and I tried to rev him up a bit. He was just happy sitting back drinking without Mum having a go at him. One good thing that happened but was that Jamie offered to take Run out on the
fishing boat he worked on. Said there might be work, that there was always fellas coming and going. He reckons they got sick of working in the cold and rough conditions or their women got sick of them being on the ocean all the time. ‘Plenty of money to be made,' Jamie said, ‘but you gotta be solid, bruz,' he said.

When we got back to my flat that night I said to Run, ‘You could have talked to Cleo, said hello or something.'

‘I said hello,' Run growled, all charged up.

‘Well talk to her and that. I mean, she looked lovely bruz.'

‘Come on, Calypso, she's too good for me.'

‘How you know that?'

‘Last missus took off with a parking inspector twice her age.' ‘It was just bad luck, bruz,' I told him.

‘Yeah, just my luck,' Run reckoned.

I wanted Run to think about Cleo, and Jamie's offer, but it was no use talking to him just before he started smoking up. I put on the Marley song ‘Lively Up Yourself ' before I made my way to bed.

17

Clare picked me up first thing on Boxing Day to cruise to Aunty Janet's. She was wearing the necklace and earrings and we listened to the test match on the radio. We didn't stop at Port Wakefield and we weren't going to stay at Aunty Janet's overnight either. I just wanted to meet with the mob and get Clare back to my place that night.

When we pulled into Aunty Janet's, Clare pointed out Uncle Ray's car. ‘Yeah, Bruce is here too,' I said, seeing Bruce's Toyota four-wheel drive.

‘Cool,' said Clare, ‘I hope Vic and Mel are here.'

As soon as we pulled up out the front of Aunty Janet's, Brea and Shae came out to meet us. ‘Hello Calypso,' said Brea and Shae holding new mobile phones.

‘You two have a good Christmas?' I asked.

‘Yep,' said Brea.

‘Brea and Shae, this is Clare,' I said trying to be cool.

‘Hello,' they said coming up to her with new mobile phones in their hands.

‘You're Calypso's girlfriend, hey?' said Shae.

‘Yeah,' Clare replied with a little laugh.

‘And you're a hairdresser?' Brea asked.

‘That's right,' said Clare as she took me by the hand.

‘Do you reckon you could braid our hair?'

‘Maybe later,' I told them. ‘We've got to go in and say hello to your dad and nan and all the mob first.'

‘Alright then,' said Brea.

‘See you girls later,' said Clare as we made our way up onto Aunty Janet's porch and through her front door.

Aunty Janet, Uncle Ray, Mel, Vic, Bruce and Shanti greeted us with hugs, kisses and handshakes. Everyone took a moment to meet Clare before Bruce said, ‘Okay, we know what we're all here for, let's all sit down and get down to business.' Everyone, including the two old uncles Edward and Joseph, took a seat at Aunty Janet's huge kitchen table. Clare held my hand. I was nervous, kind of like how I felt when I had my first job interview. There was silence for a moment as Aunty Janet took a sip of tea and me and Clare looked at three bulging plastic bags in the middle of the table.

‘Now Calypso, we've all had a bit of a yarn about this proposal of yours. This is your opportunity to tell us a bit more about it,' said Bruce.

‘No worries,' I said.

‘So what are your intentions?' Vic asked, all serious and pokerfaced. Then he smiled and said, ‘Only joking cuz, what you want to do?'

‘Well like I've told some of you … one day my boss said he wanted some Aboriginal plants for his bath oils and lotions and that. I couldn't believe it when he said he'd give me three thousand dollars and money to you mob if we helped him out.' Clare squeezed my hand.

‘That's shitloads of money,' said Mel.

‘So when my boss Gary told me what he was after, I spoke to Mum, because I thought she knew lots about bush tucker and that. I mean she used to always be talking about it, but she wouldn't tell me nothing, she just told me to come and speak with you mob.'

‘See, told yas he just wanted to get this stuff and make some quick cash.' Vic said, agitated.

‘Nah, not at all, I was really happy to meet all you mob. That's the best thing …'

‘Don't worry about him … shut up Vic,' Mel butted in. ‘He's only messing with you, Calypso.'

‘The thing is,' Bruce jumped in, ‘if we give you just a little bit of the plants, your boss will be able to make the biggest mobs of stuff from it. You see, you just extract the substance by boiling it up and then you can make a concentrate.'

‘Well it's up to you fellas how much you give him,' I said.

‘And if your boss likes what we give him, where to from there?' Bruce asked.

‘Well for a start, whatever profits Gary makes, they need to be shared with everyone.'

‘Fifty-fifty?' Vic said.

‘Whatever! I don't mind. I mean, only a year ago I was broke. I didn't have no job, nothing …' I glanced at Clare.

‘Thanks cuz.' Vic was smiling.

‘If things work out with my boss I hope that we can all be involved in growing the plants and harvesting them, making like a bit of a business.'

‘Oh, there will be no worries with growing the plants,' said Aunty Janet before everyone cracked up. ‘But this Gary fella, we'll have to talk with him you know, before anything happens.'

When everyone stopped laughing Bruce said, ‘I don't know if your boss can make much money for us selling these things but we have to look after the property and make some money too.'

‘Yeah, we don't want sheep fucking it up,' Vic protested.

Everyone shook their heads in agreement with Vic, even the two old uncles, Edward and Joseph. I was confused. I thought Vic was in favour of running sheep on the property.

Then Bruce said, ‘I spoke with a doctor at work about making products out of our plants and he said we need to get a chemist to pinpoint what is in the plants that make them work, what they call the
active ingredient
.'

‘Why we need to do that? The old people have always known they work,' Aunty Janet said.

‘It's not to prove they work Mum, we know that,' said Bruce, ‘It's so we can patent what we're making, so others can't start making it too and cutting us out.'

‘True,' said Vic. ‘Most medicines in chemist shops all around the world come from Indigenous medicines 'ey, but we never get credit or bunda from them.'

‘I understand what you're saying,' I said. Gary is always talking about what's in the powders and stuff we sell … what makes them work and where they come from … and I don't want anyone getting ripped off.'

‘We've got our lawyer onto it,' said Bruce. ‘But until he helps us to organise a scientist and the patent, we can only show you the plants. We can't tell you their names or anything.'

‘And if your boss wants to try these things out, I gotta be there to show him and talk with him,' said Uncle Ray.

‘This stuff is real secret,' Vic warned.

‘Of course,' I said.

‘Same here, I won't say a thing,' Clare said, getting carried away with the business talk.

‘Just show Calypso the plants and things,' Uncle Ray growled. Mel, Vic and Bruce poured the contents of the bags onto the table. There were three different types of plants along with four containers of liquid that looked like cooking oil.

‘They all work?' I asked, thinking there would only be one type of plant.

‘They all do different things, dear,' Aunty Janet said. ‘Some make water kind of bubble like fizzy drink, one relaxes you and smells nice.' She rubbed some leaves between her fingers and held them to her nose.

‘Even make you horny too,' said Vic before we all cracked up, even Aunty Janet.

‘And one releases all of these minerals that cleans your skin and makes you float in the water. You can even make toothpaste out of that one Vic is holding there,' said Mel. ‘Lots of different things you can do with all of them really.'

‘When you mix them all together they're proper good for you, Calypso,' said Uncle Ray. ‘See, we cooked them all up in big pots and extracted their oil and things, that's what is in the bottles there, see? Sometimes we even mix it with emu and kangaroo fat to make them go further.'

I looked at the bottles full of the stuff on the kitchen bench and then took one of them from the centre of the table and held it up to my eyes to check out its consistency.

‘This Gary fella is probably best to try the oils just as they are,' said Aunty Janet. ‘I'll show you how to make it like that one day.'

There was silence for a while as I took the different plant samples in my hand and examined them, smelling them and rubbing them on my skin.

‘What's wrong, Calypso?' Aunty Janet asked.

‘Nothing. Everything is fine,' I said. But really I was worrying about Gary, worrying that he wasn't just all talk, that he really knew how to make a go of things. ‘Are these plants hard to grow?' I asked and everyone pissed themselves laughing. Vic and Mel had tears rolling down their faces. When they all calmed down a bit, Bruce said, ‘Come outside cuz and have a look.'

Clare and I followed Vic, Mel and Bruce through the back door of Aunty Janet's house and into the yard. As soon as we were walking across the dusty yard Mel said, ‘There's one of the plants there see, just growing like weeds.'

Clare and I looked down and tiptoed around the plants, careful not to damage them.

‘Yeah, but look over the fence here,' said Bruce, waving Clare and me toward him enthusiastically with a huge smile on his face.

I rested my arms on top of the corrugated iron sheets of Aunty Janet's fence to have a look and I couldn't believe what I saw. There was an entire paddock that stretched for miles full of two types of the plants they'd shown me. Just like Mel reckoned, they were growing like weeds.

‘Deadly,' was all I could say.

‘It's everywhere,' Clare whispered before she put her arm around my waist.

‘If we can make this stuff work, we're sitting on a gold mine, you realise, Calypso?' said Bruce.

‘I reckon,' I said, my excitement rising.

‘And the other plant you showed us, where's that?' Clare asked.

‘Oh there's plenty of that too,' said Vic enthusiastically. ‘It grows everywhere up near the hills. It'd grow like wild fire if we tried to harvest it.'

‘It grows like wild fire anyway,' said Vic.

I just stood there in disbelief looking over the paddocks as Uncle Ray, Bruce and Vic talked about plans for meeting with Gary and presenting the oils. I couldn't wait to put our plans in motion.

°°°

When we got out of Aunty Janet's drive we just cracked with excitement. Clare rubbed my leg like it was some kind of lucky charm. ‘You're really going to do it, Calypso!' she said.

‘We're all gunna do it!' I said laughing and punching the air. ‘All of us, the whole mob!'

‘So when you going to call Gary?'

‘I'll wait and tell him first thing in the morning, bright and early.'

‘He'll be pretty happy, hey?'

‘But what if the chemist can't find the active ingredients, what if that don't work out?' I said.

‘That will be easy for them, they do it all the time,' Clare said adjusting her rear-view mirror. ‘It's like the shampoo we sell, companies are always getting chemists to say what's in it. Shampoo is just made out of plants and things too. Imagine if we made shampoo out of some of those plants? You could you know, they smelt pretty good.'

‘We could call it Calypso's Curls.'

‘You call them curls?' Clare said, pulling at one of my dreads. Then she turned on the cricket. The West Indies were doing pretty well and we were happy as Larry.

When we reached the outskirts of the city, all the city lights spread out like sparks shooting from a bonfire into the night sky. I thought about how hot things were with Clare in her bedroom on Christmas day. I wanted to ask her to stay the night. I wanted to feel her beneath me, to wake up beside her. We'd been seeing each other for long enough, and I'd fallen for her big-time. I watched Clare's mouth as she sang along to the radio and then traced her shoulders with my eyes, and her arms, all the way along to her hands resting on the steering wheel.

Clare turned to me and placed her hand on my leg. ‘What's wrong?'

‘Nothing, why?'

‘You've just been quiet for a while, that's all.'

‘Alright,' I said but as we got closer to my suburb, I could feel my skin getting all hot and prickly. I was real nervous. My mouth was getting real dry too. I grabbed my bottle of water and had a swig.

When Clare turned into my street she said, ‘You'll have to call me straight after you speak with Gary, okay?'

‘Course,' I said.

‘I'm sure he'll be happy with the plan,' Clare assured me.

‘We'll see,' I said as Clare pulled into my driveway.

When Clare pulled up we sat in silence for a tick until she said, ‘I hate it when I have to say goodbye.' I didn't say anything. I just leaned over and kissed her full on. Clare wrapped her hands around my neck and I pulled her towards me. When I kissed her neck I whispered, ‘Do you want to stay the night?' Clare kissed
me again and I took that as a ‘yes'. But then she drew back and said, ‘I'd love to but I can't, not tonight.'