The Yield: A Novel

Switching to third person, Poppy goes on the day of his death to look at the dried-up riverbed of the Murrumby River. He thinks about how the river looked when it was flowing and how quickly things change.

August Gondiwindi, Poppy’s granddaughter, receives news of his death. Having left Australia 10 years before, she now lives in London and is “about to exit the infinite stretch of her twenties and ha[s] nothing to show” (14). She turns to a newspaper reporting the extinction of the black rhino and thinks about how a rhino might taste. August reflects on a conversation she had with her flatmate about how her mother used to pack school lunches for her, ranging from jam sandwiches to play food when there was no real food to be had, and how both remembering these stories and being absent from her home hurt. Thinking again about the rhino, she thinks about how Poppy is now also extinct and how she will return home for the funeral. As she flies back home, she tries to sleep through the flight, wanting to eliminate the distance that exists. August reflects on the pain of memory and returning.

The first of Poppy’s dictionary entries is yaranny, or yarran tree. He describes reading the dictionary from front to back and begins to discuss other ways of reading it. He thinks about how words in the dictionary recall things, like “AA - Alcoholics Anonymous” bringing up memories of his mother spiting the colonial rule she suffered under by drinking colonial poison in the form of alcohol. Poppy says that the absence of Wiradjuri words in the dictionary inspired him to start his own list, working backward, beginning with yaranny.

August’s plane lands, and she makes her way to her hometown of Massacre Plains. As she returns, she sees the legacy of colonialism in the dried-up river, the poverty, and the long-promised improvements that have never arrived. Stopping at the convenience store to buy cigarettes, she is offered condolences for her grandfather’s death. She reflects on how in her absence, births, deaths, and marriages have occurred that she is now unaware of. Although she tried to forget the town, she could not fully do so, as it was the place her sister, Jedda, disappeared.

She returns to her family home, Prosperous Farm, and sees the rotting remains of the Christian Mission that once stood there. Entering the home, she greets her grandmother Elsie. Their interactions are awkward, with August not knowing what to say and Elsie unforgiving of August’s long absence. They begin to cook together, and Elsie tells August that people from the city are going to be taking the house from them. Going into her grandfather’s office, August remembers her childhood and how she and her sister used to run through the house and the fields around it.

The second dictionary entry is bilirr, the yellow-tailed black cockatoo. Poppy discusses the musicality of the “r” in the word. He describes the bilirr, saying that all Gondiwindi love them. He remembers being at the Boy’s Home and standing under a sign that said “Think White. Act White. Be White” when he saw a woman at the edge of the gate. Walking down and speaking with her, she taught him the word Wanga-dyung: “lost, but not forever.” Turning around, he sees that the sky has suddenly gone from cloudless to stormy and that there is only a bilirr where the woman was. He calls this his first time travel.

Another dictionary entry is yandu, meaning yet, if, then, when, and at the time. He describes his ancestors coming to him all the time at the Boys’ Home after that first instance, how he would listen to their stories, and how his great-great-great-grandfather taught him the word yandu. He then gives another entry: baayanha, which means to yield, bend the feet, tread, as in walking, and also long, tall. After reflecting on baayanha, he gives another word: minhi, or younger sister. He thinks about conversations he’s had and how much family he has lost. He remembers being three years old in the Boys’ Home and thinking about his baby sister who was also taken away from their parents. Poppy says that he was lucky and that he found his baby sister, Mary, again, even if they’re different from each other and not as affectionate as he might want.

August and Elsie go to bed in the house, which wasn’t a home for August since Jedda disappeared. Although the townspeople became more nervous after Jedda disappeared, because she was Indigenous, her disappearance wasn’t widely talked about among white families. However, the other Indigenous families of the town mourned. August, nine years old when Jedda disappeared, has struggled to deal with the sudden and unexplained loss, not quite knowing how to think of Jedda.

August reflects on the loss of the house and how her family will be gone from this place. Despite the bad memories, it still feels wrong. She smokes and thinks about the feeling she has had for most of her life of missing something essential. She remembers the weeks after Jedda disappeared and how she ate the roots and plants that grew around the creek on the property, trying to make herself one with the earth to protect herself. Her grandfather then baptized her in the creek, saying it would protect her.

Another dictionary entry is nadhadirrambanhi, or war. Poppy describes how Massacre Plains got its name because the Gondiwindi were tired of settlers stealing their resources and ruining the cultivation of the land they had worked on for hundreds of years; in return for their resistance, they were massacred.

Poppy continues to give dictionary entries, using them as a method of discussing the history he knows. He tells of the water of the region and how it was stolen and of the plant life of his home and how it is sacred, to be used for life, not profit. Poppy also discusses the hardships of his life and his desire to make things good, the Gondiwindi family history, and how things reach through time. Particular attention is paid to food, with bread and fish connecting the Gondiwindi through the years. He again tells of his ancestors visiting him and how they taught him to dance and also showed him death. Though he was scared, he realized that their teachings were just things he needed, not what he needed right at that moment.

August remembers being a child living with her parents. She once snuck open the fridge to eat a whole block of cheese, an ecstasy compared to the usual sparse cupboards. Her parents moved to a town called Sunshine after she was born, a few hours south of Massacre Plains. August and Jedda’s parents would act like playmates to them, especially their mother. Although their parents struggled with the responsibility of children and their house was falling apart, the girls were happy when playing. Their parents were arrested one winter when the lack of snow on their roof led the police to find the marijuana plants they were growing. After this, the girls moved back to Massacre Plains with their grandparents, returning to their ancestral home.

Another dictionary entry is dulbi-nya, to worship or to bend low. Poppy discusses how Aboriginal people liked to worship and were fine with the concept of Jesus but that the problems stemmed from Christian colonizers telling them that to worship, they had to give up their cultural practices. He says they were good at worshipping the world long before they were told to worship Christ. He goes on to discuss the land and its exploitation under colonization and the concept of understanding. He thinks through his life, remembering the teacher who was kind but misguided at the Boys’ Home, his move to the Prosperous Farm, and the continuing themes of memory and trauma. He speaks of his own impending death and the visits and lessons he received throughout his life from his ancestors. He relates a conversation he had with one of his ancestors about the smallpox epidemic brought by settlers and how she encouraged him to tell their stories.

This chapter is a letter from Reverand Ferdinand Greenleaf, sent to Dr. George Cross of the British Society of Ethnography, dated August 2, 1915. Greenleaf writes to Cross that he is reaching the end of his life and wants to explain why he did not provide information on the Aboriginal people of Australia for exhibition. He feels he must share what he remembers as dark times seem to be approaching for the native people of Massacre Plains.

Greenleaf relates his journey to Australia as a child with his parents and how he worked as a reverend around the area of Massacre Plains for 34 years. He says that the Prosperous Mission has been seized by the government and that he regrets having been able to do so little for the native population when they provided the settlers with so much. There is nowhere he would rather be, although he woke the night before to townsmen gathering outside where he slept and feared he would be hanged. Greenleaf reaffirms his commitment to telling the truth.