The Mother Fault

by Kate Mildenhall

  The women seem to be seeking consensus, disagreeing with the driver. A younger woman with pink lipstick and a bright blue headscarf looks up from her phone and speaks decisively, and the older women nod. Minutes later, the Bemo pulls over and the woman with the orange leans over to touch Mim’s arm, points out the window to a blue cross above a shop a little way up the street.

  ‘Doctor?’

  The woman nods. Smiles, ushers them out.

  ‘Terima kasih, thank you.’ Mim smiles.

  She pushes the kids ahead of her, has to help Nick when he tries to get up from the seat and falls back. She hands over some cash, too much probably. The driver smiles and pulls back into the traffic.

  The clinic is open to the street. Clean and white and tiled, sandals and thongs lined up at the edge of the tiles. A glass cabinet across the front lined with boxes of antibiotics. Not much she understands. She hopes that someone will speak English. Just not enough to ask too many questions.

  The woman at the desk is pleasant-faced but unsmiling.

  ‘Hello. It’s okay for me to speak English?’ Mim says.

  ‘I speak English.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She smiles in relief. ‘It’s…’ she pauses, decides quickly, ‘my husband.’ She feels Essie tense beside her. ‘We were on a boat, an accident, he hurt his toes. He has an infection, I think.’ She points back to where Nick is sitting, his head leant back against the tiles behind him.

  ‘Passport?’ the woman asks, holding out her hand.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The patient’s passport. Or yours. You have it?’

  Mim scrabbles for the bag. ‘His. Yes. Here, sorry.’ She hands Nick’s passport over. Scratchy skipping pulse.

  The woman takes the passport to the back of the counter where there is an old scanner and takes a copy.

  ‘What’s that for, Mum?’ Sam asks quietly.

  ‘Just a copy, Sammy, so they know who they are looking after. You two go and sit down, huh?’

  Any minute, she thinks, any minute and they will give it away.

  The woman slides a laminated sheet across the counter. It is a list of fees. Traveller consultation, it reads, twenty-five US dollars.

  Sailors must maroon themselves here often enough, broken or bitten or burning up with tropical fevers.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Mim hands over the cash, a silent thanks to Nick. The beginning of a ledger she does not know how or when she will repay.

  ‘He can come now,’ the woman says, gesturing to Nick.

  ‘Right.’ Mim turns to Nick, to the line of locals who are sitting against the wall, some swipe screens, an older man rests his head on the shoulder of a younger man, his son, perhaps. A young woman holds a small child in her arms, a saline line taped to her little wrist, snaking up to the clear bag on the silver pole. The woman wheels the pole as she walks up and down.

  Mim hesitates. Straight to the head of the queue. Promises herself she will make up for her privilege at some other time. By fuck, she will use it now.

  ‘Through here,’ the woman says. She is impatient and Mim feels as though she is being punished.

  Nick stands slowly, and Mim goes to him, allows him to lean on her. She tries not to make eye contact with the others who still sit there. Waiting.

  * * *

  It is a small room and Mim and the kids squish up against the wall as the woman gestures for Nick to sit on the bed. A man, the doctor, nods his head and they exchange words. Mim wonders if she is saying ‘Stupid fucking foreign sailor. With cash.’

  She leans back, wishes there was more air than the whirring fan.

  ‘Mum, I’m hot.’ She passes Essie the water bottle.

  There is a smell. Ammonia, the nose-crinkling scent of gauze, just unwrapped, the sweet of the pink handwash. She is acutely aware of how they all must smell. Thinks back to the last wash, the deck shower, the sun, my god, all that has happened.

  The doctor helps Nick put his foot up on the bed. Gently unwraps the bandage to reveal the damage beneath. He leans in, pokes his gloved finger towards the toes. What is left of the toes.

  ‘No good,’ he says and shakes his head. ‘Hospital.’

  ‘You fix it,’ says Nick. ‘I have more cash.’

  The doctor frowns, shakes his head again, says something to the woman in Bahasa.

  ‘The injury is too bad. He must go to hospital,’ the woman says. ‘There is a private one here, in the city. I will get you a taxi.’

  ‘Fuck,’ Nick mutters under his breath.

  ‘Mum?’ Essie looks at her, speaks almost under her breath. ‘What about Dad?’

  ‘Shhh,’ she says, touching Essie’s hair, pretending not to notice the woman’s eyes flick up. ‘Let’s just get this sorted, huh?’

  * * *

  The hospital is at the top of a winding street, narrow with street vendors, silky bunting hanging from low, tiled roofs. Bikes weave slowly, schoolkids bunch in their uniforms, little backpacks strapped on their backs.

  A woman in a pale peach shirt with a green logo embossed above the breast comes out to meet the taxi as they pile out of the car. Nick is wobbly and weaker now from all the movement.

  A young man brings out an old wheelchair and Mim lets them take Nick, help him to the chair. He lets out a soft oomph and she is momentarily pierced with embarrassment, it seems like something an old man might do.

  Inside, the hospital is bright. Yellow walls and cartooned posters showing handwashing, covering your face when you sneeze. There is movement, bustle, just like any hospital at home, except this time they are the foreigners; there are curious glances, smiles, quick nods. Some of the signs are in English, so the hospital must have a few travellers, ex-pats maybe, as patients, but they are rare enough to be of interest. She feels grubby, wants to explain herself. Is suddenly weary to her very core. ‘Just a little bit longer, then we’ll go and clean up,’ she says to the kids, but it isn’t as if they care. They wait in a small room with Nick until a doctor comes and says they should wait in reception. She touches Nick’s shoulder as she leaves. ‘I’ve got your stuff,’ she says.

  He nods, catches her eyes, tries a smile, but he looks so tired now. Part of her wants to stay and look after him, the him of before, of that first cracked smile back at Eagles Nest where she was tethered to memory. She also wants to leave him now, he is complicating things. She feels a part of her sloughing off. The bright steely autonomy of what might be underneath.

  They pile their gear on a seat in the reception area, and Mim tells the kids to sit while she goes out to the vendor she can see through the window. She buys soft drinks for the kids, Nescafe in a can for herself, bread in a packet, a knobbled green fruit which the female vendor presses on her, smiling, nodding.

  They wait. The same young woman in the uniform brings her a form to fill out.

  ‘For your husband,’ she says, and Mim nods, smiles, takes the board and pen.

  There are words in Indonesian, the English translation beside. She scans the page and realises how little she actually knows about Nick.

  ‘Do you have many Australians come here?’ she asks when she hands the form back, the niggle of possibility.

  ‘Not so many,’ the woman says and smiles. ‘Sometimes, sailors, but also Americans, English, Italian.’

  ‘From the project?’

  The woman cocks her head.

  ‘Golden Arc. The mine?’

  She purses her lips. ‘They have their own medical.’

  ‘On the island?’

  ‘Of course.’ The woman nods her head. ‘Much money, China. But sometimes, if an injury is very bad, maybe…’

  Mim leans forward, a pulsing at the corner of her eye, exhaustion, feels a headache building. ‘Do you – sorry…’ She turns and grabs her wallet from the bag, pulls out the photo of the four of them and shows it to the woman. ‘Have you ever seen this man?’ She points to Ben’s smiling face.

  ‘Your family?’ the woman asks, and takes the photo, peering intentl
y. ‘Your children are very beautiful.’

  Mim smiles quickly, but presses her, ‘Have you seen him?’

  ‘Your husband, no?’ The woman is frowning, looking at the man in the picture who is so clearly not the man Mim has come in with.

  She breathes sharply. ‘No – not my husband – have you seen him though?’

  The woman shakes her head. ‘I don’t think, I’m sorry. He works for Golden Arc?’

  Mim nods.

  The woman shakes her head. ‘Bad news there lately. They say there was an explosion. People were hurt, maybe, but they keep to themselves. We wouldn’t know.’

  An explosion.

  ‘How many people were hurt?’

  ‘They don’t say, it is rumours only.’

  Mim nods. ‘Thank you, thank you anyway.’

  Essie rounds on her when she sits back down. ‘What were you showing her?’ she demands.

  ‘Nothing, it wasn’t…’ Mim trails off. She looks out through the streaked window, the mayhem of traffic, Bemos, motorbikes, bicycles, the street vendors up and down the road, the cars weaving in and out, all the way down to the harbour. What if he’s hurt? Worse? And they are trying to cover it up? An acidic trickle burns in her gullet. Where are you, Ben?

  * * *

  After a while, the same doctor comes out, ushers them into another room where Nick is sitting up on a bed, his foot stretched out in front of him, clean at last. Next to him there is an IV drip lacing down from a tall metal pole and into the crook of his elbow. His head rests back on a pillow and he opens his eyes as the doctor begins to talk.

  The doctor is a tall man, young, belt cinching at his hips, white shirt smoothed and tucked, immaculate.

  He explains that Nick will need to stay a couple of days, needs antibiotics to stop the infection spreading. They got here just in time, he says, he could have lost his toes.

  ‘He won’t though?’ Mim asks quickly.

  ‘No, we will do surgery this afternoon, repair what is damaged. He will keep his toes.’

  ‘That’s good.’ She smiles. ‘Isn’t it?’ she says to the kids, and they nod at Nick.

  Nick attempts a smile. ‘Go get a hotel. Come back tomorrow.’

  Mim feels a lurch in her gut at the thought of leaving him. No, not leaving him, but being on her own, with the kids, in all this strangeness.

  ‘It’s okay, we can stick around.’

  The doctor coughs quietly. ‘There is a hotel right next door. I can ask reception to help you organise a room there. You will be very close.’

  Nick nods at her. ‘Go on, go have a shower, get some food, then you can come back, if you want.’ He levels his gaze at her. ‘You’ll be okay,’ he says.

  She moves forward, grips his hand quickly, then lets it go.

  ‘Your husband is in good hands,’ the doctor says and Mim thanks him quickly, ushering the kids out of the room before they can say anything.

  24

  The air outside is wet. She thinks of the autumn dry she usually hates back home, when the air feels like it might shatter at your touch, nothing like this damp fug. She wants to towel her skin until it flakes away. She needs to find a phone shop, a network, some way to send a message to her mother. Tell her they are alive, okay. But first – god, yes, when Nick said it – first she wants a shower.

  * * *

  The man at the hotel reception is sweet, young, his smile cracking at the kids as he rushes to help them with their bags when they come in through the glass entrance.

  She’s had better hotels, but this will do.

  His smile slips away when she says she does not have a passport she can hand over.

  ‘We are sailing.’ She laughs nervously, her hand going out to touch Essie’s shoulder. ‘We came straight to the hospital, there was an accident.’

  ‘No identification, madam?’ he asks again. ‘I am sorry, but to check in…’ he trails off. He is nervous, she thinks, young. Trying to follow the rules.

  ‘My husband is at the hospital, his passport is there. I can get it tonight.’

  He smiles widely. ‘Yes! Yes, that will be okay. I will tell my boss.’

  * * *

  The kids have been appeased with the sweet green welcome drink the boy from reception has brought up. Their screens need charging but there is an old television in the corner that screams some kind of music, the chaos and bang of cartoons. She leaves them to it, half-hoping they fall asleep with the heat, the madness of it all. She has no idea what time it is and tries to count back the hours. Was it only this morning they arrived on the beach? Could be mid-afternoon by now. She wonders when it will get dark. Must get some food into the kids, must get back to check on Nick. Must find her husband. Shakes her head, grabs the towel from the cheap bedspread.

  Under the pounding heat of the water, she puts her hands up against the tiles, one against each wall, feels the strange sensation that they are swinging and rocking beneath her touch. She tries to fix her eyes on the taps to hold herself steady, but the walls appear to bulge and tilt and she has to go with it, moving her body like she did when the kids were young, rocking and rocking, that constant motion. Her body wants to be back on the boat. She turns off the shower reluctantly.

  There is a mirror – the first time she has seen herself for days.

  Look at yourself.

  Shoulders pink and scaly, the skin shrunk with sun and salt. The white of her boobs, not swollen with sex and want like she’d imagined them in his hands, his mouth, the dark of that star-plucked night – just ageing skin. She leans closer, self-loathing curls her bottom lip. A dark hair above her nipple, she tries to pinch it between her thumb and forefinger, can’t, tries again, pulls hard and spitefully. The sting of it coming free, tears in her eyes.

  She bites down. Below the lip to skin, so that she can really feel it.

  Imagine Ben fucking someone, she says silently to the woman in the mirror. Go on, imagine it. How does that feel you shameless bitch? You selfish, horrible person.

  She presses her hands against the mirror. Black mould in the corners where the glass has chipped.

  What have you become?

  She feels deceived by her own body. Towels herself hard with the thin fabric. Punishing herself. Forget, she thinks. A moment of madness. This is what is real, now. Ben. This is what is true.

  * * *

  When the three of them step outside the hotel doors, pushed out by growling stomachs, the sky bulges with dark monsoonal clouds. The air is soupy, a haze of bugs linger around Sam’s head. She wants to go into the hospital, but the kids both whinge that they need food. Her nerves flicker as she looks down into the maze of streets. She needs to find some Aeroguard – there could be malaria, dengue, who knows what strange diseases are sprouting in this overheating quagmire? God, what would a travel doctor have advised them to have shots for? Add it to the list of her parenting fails.

  ‘C’mon, Mum!’ Sam calls, and she grabs Essie’s elbow and follows him, so she doesn’t have to make the decision herself.

  It is a blessing really, that it’s so overcast. She imagines full sun with this wet heat and thinks they would not even be able to venture out in it. They step over the cracked concrete of the sidewalk, swerving over little mounds of moist dog shit, splattered bags of brightly coloured muck.

  ‘Hello! Hello!’ A young man on a becak slows to ride beside them. ‘You want a ride to the market?’

  Mim smiles, waves him away, but Sam tugs at her sleeve. ‘Can we? Mum, please?’

  ‘No problem!’ the man says, smiling, placing his feet down. ‘You jump in?’

  Mim smiles apologetically, shakes her head at Sam. ‘No, mate, we have to keep our money, it’s good to walk.’ Sam’s face drops. ‘No, thank you, terima kasih,’ she repeats to the man.

  ‘Okay, okay!’ he calls brightly. ‘For free! I’m going that way.’

  ‘Mum! Please!’

  Mim throws up her hands.

  ‘Where you from?’ he asks as he brushes d
own the short bench seat in the small, canopied buggy behind his bike. It is perfectly clean already, pale blue vinyl, a string of lights around the scalloped edge of the roof, but he wipes it down anyway, holds out his hand in invitation.

  ‘Australia,’ says Sam enthusiastically, as he scrambles up and shuffles along. Mim and Essie squish in next to him.

  It takes a couple of moments for the becak to take off. The young man stands on the pedals and bears down hard. Mim reaches forward to get his attention. ‘It’s okay,’ she says, embarrassed. ‘We’re too heavy, it’s okay!’

  The becak driver laughs, does not stop. ‘Okay!’ he says and they begin to build momentum. The traffic surges and drifts chaotically around them – other becaks, bicycles, motos with entire families, polished SUVs with darkened windows cutting in front of everyone else. The squat concrete architecture of the buildings seems brutal, ugly, but it is softened by the curlicues of vines, flowers, the blossoming pattern of mould, almost growing in front of their eyes in the humidity.

  ‘Look! Mum!’ Sam points to a balloon seller on the corner. Hundreds of colourful foil characters swaying in an enormous net above his head. The pulse of the city all around them. She wonders if they will ever travel through a place just to see it again. Whether the kids will ever wander, wonder, like she and Ben did once. Marvelling at the differences, eyes grown wide with culture shock, the thrill of it all.

  Essie holds her screen up: a trolley filled with square cakes, a shopfront open to the street bulging with straw brooms, cascades of purple shampoo sachets, a child crawling on the tiles, laughing at a cat. Her face is bright with it all.