Hidden Histories (& Acts of Disappearance)
After Billy-Ray Belcourt
Many thanks to Island Magazine, where this essay was originally published.
they tore down the building where i used to liverazed the earth & made it green again/
It’s the first day of July 2023 and I’m wandering down West End’s Hardgrave Road. The takeaway latte, hot in my hand, is the only source of warmth on this bitter winter day. When I reach the Rialto, I take a moment to admire its art deco architecture—its unmistakable shades of pastel pink, butter yellow, and seafoam green. At ninety-seven years of age, it endures as a flamboyant monument. I press on. A flurry of bright orange foxes dance inside the mural that marks the end of my pilgrimage. Now, my vigil begins.
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The bright orange hessian that blocked access to the property has been flattened, as if trampled by a herd of cattle. I step over it and climb the steep incline. The grass crunches underneath my feet. Its shades of beige and gold tell a story of neglect. An abandoned couch rots away in the corner by a pile of rubble and rubbish. I reach the far right corner of the block, take a seat, and sip my coffee. People passing by stare at me suspiciously. My heart rate increases. The neighbours either side have unobstructed views of the hill. Are they watching me from their windows? Will they make a phone call to someone? The real estate agent, perhaps? Are they peering from behind their curtains, speaking in hushed tones of a stranger who doesn’t belong? If only they knew that I did—that I do. That, just twelve months ago, this used to be my home.
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I’m adept at beginnings but I’m yet to master endings. In my struggle against impermanence, I craft these monuments to memory. Multi-modal archives of the rubble from my life. I rage against erasure, ruin, and decay by telling the truth about the way things were. This monument to memory is a body of knowledge and truth. A body that defies the frail hands of history. This body is my body and my body keeps the score.
/
I was born in June 1993 to an Aboriginal mother and a non-Aboriginal father. They raised me by the banks of the Balonne River in St. George, a small farming town renowned for its cotton, cattle and table grapes. It has been home to my family for generations. During the first seventeen years of my life, I unknowingly co-existed with its hidden histories.
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We lived on the outskirts of town, two blocks from the river where, on summer days, we would swim in muddy water, flinching at the feel of shrimp in the silt beneath our feet. This river has a history that hides in plain sight. By its banks, 151 years before I was born, a war raged on. From 1842 to 1852, settlers sought permanent occupancy within our region by any means necessary. This violence in St. George and on its surrounding Country is known as the Mandandanji Land War. As a young boy, I had no knowledge of this war. All I saw before me was a river made for swimming.
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i come from muddy waterfrom splinters splitfrom pale slabs of cypress pine/
As a toddler, I would don my mother’s silky, satin nightdress, take to my makeshift stage, and sing and dance for anyone willing to watch and listen. My grandmother, B, always watched with delight. Whenever my parents had parties, she would cut the conversation while I waited in the wings.
‘Be quiet, everyone! Stop talking,’ she would say. ‘Darby has something to show us!’ Everyone but Nana would impatiently endure my performance until I bowed and she coerced their thunderous applause. She was always my number one fan.
I do not remember this. I was far too young. If it weren’t for the stories passed down by my mother, this history would be buried deep inside of me. A hidden history lost forever.
/
i come from kamilaroiblack face displacedalong my matriarchal line/My matrilineage rests upon hidden histories. Despite my best efforts, our family tree remains shrouded in mystery—a trail of doctored documents, deliberate omissions, and calculated erasures. My mother’s grandmother, E, was born in 1901 to an ‘unknown’ father. At ten, she was sent away – forced to work as a maid in a household where she was segregated from the white children. My mother did not know this. Her mother never told her. I recently unearthed it for us all.
I am haunted by this history—haunted by the young girl, all alone so far from home. I am haunted by a story that was almost lost forever—an act of disappearance on my matriarchal line.
/
Growing up in St. George, I tried and failed to hide my Aboriginality and my queerness in a place where racism was rife and gay was a slur and a synonym for inferior, effeminate, or weak. I harboured the heavy weight of shame and felt, at the most inherent level, that there was something wrong with me. This sentiment was often mirrored back to me. Affirmed by the boy who told me that ‘gays are disgusting’ or the boy who charged when I walked by, glaring and grunting ‘poofter’ or ‘fag’ with more malice than I’d ever heard. I learned to keep my head down. I dreamed of the day I could flee St. George for the city—a place where I would be safe. A place where I would be free.
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It was ten years of share-houses, roommates and poky little bedrooms before I found the flat on Hardgrave Road. It was the first place I felt at home away from home. In the aftermath of its destruction, I excavate my memories—reconstruct it in my mind. I see it all. I see afternoon sun spilling through louvered windows. I see rugs overlapping on the creaky, wooden floor. I see the Boston fern inside the broken fireplace. I see the mantelpiece piled high with books by Patti Smith, Maggie Nelson, Bill Hayes, and Joan Didion. I see kerbside pick-up furniture and other op-shop finds, like the timber table where my friends and I had dinner parties, laughing, crying, spilling wine and secrets as we loaded up our plates. I see a younger version of myself, lounging absentmindedly on the floor. He’d finally found a place to call his own. I see it all. That flat and I were a symbiotic organism. I breathed life into it and it breathed life back into me.
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I moved into Hardgrave Road in March 2021. I was so fixated on tending to my new home that my next sojourn to Kamilaroi Country did not come until Christmas. I’d always opted to return home via the painful nine-hour bus trip, but that year, for the very first time, I could fly.
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i breathed life/into that place&it breathed life/back into me/
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ the flight attendant chimed. ‘We are beginning our descent into St. George.’
The slogan for REX Airlines is Our Heart is in the Country. I’ve always loved this; that’s where mine is too.
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Christmas, for us, means family and food. My mother, my father, my aunty, my uncle, my three younger siblings, their partners, and children all gather ‘round the table for the annual Christmas feast. A feast that my mother and I spend forty-eight hours preparing.
This kitchen ritual is a tie that binds us. During other months when I am in her kitchen, I see spectral versions of her and I going through the motions. Glazing and baking the Christmas ham. Shelling five kilo’s worth of prawns. Washing, chopping, tossing four different salads. Mixing, whipping, sampling six dressings. Folding condensed milk into cream. Soaking sponge cakes with lashings of sherry. Crowning pavlova with fresh summer fruits. Setting the table with native flowers. We are written into every surface of that space. Even when I am not there in person, we are there.
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As I take my seat at the family table, I feel the familiar pangs of jealousy. I am jealous of their day-to-day life together and jealous that they didn’t have to leave just to survive. I am jealous that they’ve continued a legacy of marriage, children, and property ownership while I remain a renter—single and childless—yearning for a hometown so incompatible with me.
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My brothers and sister are towing the line. They are fruit-bearing branches upon our family tree. I am a withered branch bearing no fruit. My line ends with me.
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‘I become less like [my family], less theirs, less bound up in the ticking time bomb of social reproduction, so less beholden to the continuation of a name, a history.’
Billy-Ray Belcourt
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When I was seventeen, leaving St. George felt like my only option, but there was a price to pay. There is always a price to pay. Life at home goes on without me. My family learn and grow alongside one another, support one another, and are present for the day-to-day happenings of life. I have missed so many milestones—baby showers, births, and birthdays. Whenever I can, I FaceTime in and people take turns tossing the phone around the crowd.
My nieces and nephew grow older every day. I fear that while I’m away I’m becoming dislodged and displaced from their memories. In this gradual act of disappearance, I inch closer and closer to fading away.
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To ease my anxiety, I recover hidden histories. I try to remember as much as possible. If I am here and now, recovering and remembering, maybe someone, someday, will come searching for me.
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We’ve all emerged from our Christmas food comas for happy hour in our backyard. Dusk stains the Southwestern sky my favourite shade of pink as ;Flame Trees’ by Cold Chisel booms from a tired, old speaker. My father knocks back bottles of beer with laser focus as my uncle regales us with stories of my brothers in their younger years. Everyone is smiling and laughing along, but I am distracted by hordes of winged insects whipping around the lawn. I wait for a break in my uncle’s story before interrupting.
‘What are they?’ I ask, pointing towards the lawn. ‘Are they grasshoppers? I can’t tell.’
There is a beat before my mother answers.
‘Oh my God, they’re dragonflies!’ she exclaims in astonishment.
Dragonflies.
We stare in silent wonder as the winged insects hum and swarm above our lawn.
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Later that night, a Google search reveals that the average lifespan of a dragonfly is seven to fourteen days, which means that, at the time of writing this, those dragonflies are dead and gone.
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I dream I am a dragonfly swarming the lawn, watching my family from afar. I wake in fright in the early morning, clinging to my body as I bolt towards the bathroom. My skin is cold and clammy. I stare at myself in the mirror, glistening in the dim, fluorescent light. I drown in the depths of my dilated pupils, arms still clinging, wrapped around my waist. I scan every inch of my body for signs of decay.
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Time changes everything. I am the body of proof. Nothing is forever. I don’t want to disappear.
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invisible boy
self-portrait, circa 2021
the body
oh, the body
keeps the score
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I was still in St. George when I got the call from my real estate agent in the city. My landlord was not renewing my lease for 2022. In fact, they would not be renewing any resident’s leases. There were major refurbishments planned for the new year and they needed us all to vacate as soon as possible. They offered compensation to those of us who left before the dates on our lease agreements. Refurbishments, I thought. Maybe I can move back in once everything is done.
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I packed my life into twelve cardboard boxes and donated or sold the things I had no space to keep. I parted with each piece—my rugs, my bed, my table—sending fragments of myself across time and space. Today, these pieces of me sit inside the homes of people who do not know their history—people who will never even know I existed.
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Months later, I woke to a text from another former tenant.
‘THEY’RE KNOCKING IT DOWN!!!’
I stared in disbelief at the photo he’d attached. When I got there later that day, the excavator was at work, shifting debris into disparate piles. I bore witness to my own mortality, watching on as the mangled hand of a former me reached out from beneath the rubble.
Faced with such violent erasure, my memories became my most precious commodity. The drive to document them in a way that would outlive me was more urgent than ever before.
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violent acts of disappearance/
‘I’m an archaeologist of the disappeared.’
Billy-Ray Belcourt
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I
WAS
HERE
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Ernest Hemingway once said that we die twice. Firstly, when we are buried in the ground. Secondly, the final time someone speaks our name. These fragments of myself, the detritus of my life, are my eternal declaration of resistance. May you hold them in your hands and in your heart. May they detail the way I raged against mortality, hidden histories, and acts of disappearance. May these blackened pages prove that I was here.
I was here!
Work Cited: Belcourt, Billy-Ray. A History of My Brief Body. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 2021.