The Mimosa Tree

by Antonella Preto

  ‘Do you have to work tonight?’ she says to Siena.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think it’s best if you cancel. The doctor has been and he thinks it could happen very soon.’

  They start crying and I start walking to Mum’s room, but Via catches me by the arm so hard it hurts.

  ‘The nurse is in there,’ she says. ‘You have to wait, Mira.’

  ‘Let me go.’

  ‘Come and sit with us,’ says Via, still holding me tightly but her voice is gentle and quavering.

  ‘I want to see my mother,’ I say, but I am no longer struggling. Realising this she pulls me towards her and holds me in her pillowy hug, and I am getting shaken by her sobs which are helping to hide mine.

  ‘We’ll go in together,’ she says. ‘We’ll all go in together.’

  We sit down at the table and wait. Siena is crying, but quietly, letting the tears drop down her cheek and pool on the table. Via, red eyed but controlled for the moment, takes comfort in her cigarettes. My father is staring at his hands and sighing occasionally in an angry way, but so far I haven’t seen him shed a single tear. Finally, the nurse enters the room.

  ‘She’s comfortable,’ she says.

  ‘Can we go in?’ I ask.

  ‘I think she would like that,’ she says smiling. We all get up, and she leads us back to the bedroom and we walk behind her in single file like a herd of depressed cows.

  This is my house, this is my hallway, but walking like this with the nurse as my guide makes it suddenly feel like I am in an unfamiliar place and I see my home as though I am looking at it for the first time. Brown wood trimming, beige walls, yellow carpet, a gold framed mirror with an ornate leaf pattern, and pride of place, above the doily adorned hall table, a large painting of the Virgin Mary, head tilted to the side and looking as spacey as any modern magazine model. She’s wearing her heart outside her chest cavity and pointing at the dagger that pierces it but spills no blood.

  ‘Don’t be scared,’ says the nurse, stopping at my mother’s door to prepare us for the final stop of our tour. ‘She isn’t in any pain. You may notice she holds her breath, and though she may not be able to speak to you or see you, you should know that she can still hear you.’ Then she smiles and waves us inside.

  ***

  My mother dies quietly, surrounded by her weeping family. This, I am told, should be of great comfort to me, but it’s not. I can’t imagine anything will be able to comfort me, probably not even the entire bottle of morphine that the nurse swiftly disposes of once she is sure Mum has taken her last breath. The others are in pain too, but to be honest I don’t take notice of them. I have enough of my own to deal with and their loss is of little consequence to me. Just hours after she dies they come to take her away, and it’s stupid, so stupid of me, but it never occurred to me that this would happen. As they lift her out of the bed I want to scream and grab hold of her and tell them to get away. But I don’t. I watch her get carried out. I watch them put her into the ambulance and I watch as they drive away with my mother and we are left with her contour in the bed, her clothes folded on the chair and the smell of her still lingering. How long until things stop smelling like her? How long until I can’t find her anymore in this house?

  Days pass, there is a lot of talk about the funeral arrangements but I stay out of it. Nobody asks me anyway. I don’t know what to do with myself in the house, like I have forgotten how to live, and even simple tasks seem useless and devoid of purpose. What is the point in showering? Why do we sit and drink coffee after coffee, as though in drinking we can forget about why we are crying? The day of the funeral comes, and they dress me and put me in the hearse, my mother in a box behind me. I am taken to the cemetery where we wait for others to arrive, a shuffling, downcast-looking crowd, so quiet that you can hear them breathing. I see the box sink into the ground and I am frightened by images of my soft, plump mother crying as she gets eaten by worms.

  After the funeral, everyone is invited back to our house. There are relatives and friends of relatives and there are people who Mum used to work with and others I have never seen before. They gather in our kitchen, around the food that Via has organised, but the trays of lasagne, veal cutlets and steamed vegetables remain untouched. I stay seated at the table as they wander around me. Some squeeze me on the shoulder without speaking. Others feel compelled to say something comforting.

  ‘You look so much like her.’

  ‘You are the woman of the house now.’

  ‘Your mother has become an angel in heaven.’

  ‘Look after your father.’

  Via and Siena wait for everyone else to leave before going themselves. They pack up the food, seal it into containers and begin to stack it away into the fridge. They make uncertain attempts at cleaning things up.

  ‘We can freeze this,’ says Via.

  ‘It shouldn’t be wasted,’ Dad agrees.

  ‘We’ll be back tomorrow,’ says Siena. ‘Leave the mess for us, okay?’ Dad goes outside to see them out but I stay seated at the table. Bambi drives away and he comes back inside, locking the front door after him. He turns to look at me. The house is quiet, except for the low ticking of the wall clock. He sits down opposite me and I get the feeling he’s waiting for me to speak, but I have nothing to say to him. After a moment, he stands up again.

  ‘We should get some sleep,’ he says.

  ‘Should we?’

  ‘Everything will be better in the morning.’

  ‘Will it?’

  He wipes his eyes with his palms, looks down at his feet as he walks by me. I hear him stop just behind me. From the corner of my eye I see his big, gnarly hand hovering above me, hovering for what seems like a lifetime before he lets it drop gently onto my shoulder. He says nothing, just lets it sit there for a moment and every second of it is painful to me and all I want to do is brush it away. Finally, he leaves and goes to his room.

  I sit in the kitchen for a long time. I close my eyes, try to imagine that my mother is just behind me, singing a song as she chops onions or does the dishes, but no matter how hard I try all I am aware of is the startling, empty cold against my back. I run to my room and hide under the covers. Outside it begins to rain. It falls drunkenly on our roof and I imagine it slipping through nips and crevices to my ceiling. In my mind my ceiling weeps, and against my pillow I weep too. For weeks I shelter under blankets while they come to sweep and dust around me. I avoid their tear-stained faces when they come to bring me food. I want to sleep and they let me. For a long time, I just sleep.

  December 1987

  Chapter 14

  In my dream I am cradled in the arms of the mimosa tree, waiting for Mum to wake up and pull open the curtains. I gaze eagerly at the window, expecting her to be surprised and pleased to find me here. As the sun rises higher in the sky the mimosa tree begins to lose its shady coolness, and I start to get cramping in my legs from crouching and clinging too long. Then I remember: Mum won’t be opening that curtain because she is dead. She has died and I will never be able to surprise or please her again. I want to weep, I want to fall out of the tree and bury my face in the grass and beat the ground with my fists, but suddenly there’s the familiar flash and everything dissolves into white and heat and I am gone.

  I wake up dazed, still blinking whiteness from my eyes. I feel something hard prodding my arms and my chest, and I try and wipe whatever it is away but my arms seem to be pinned to my side. When I feel a sharp prod at my forehead I get so angry that all my confusion at having been woken suddenly from a distressing dream disappears and the real world I have been avoiding for months comes sharply into focus. And who should I see towering over me with her finger poised for another prod? Why Via of course, with her balloon head inches from my face and her eyebrow cocked like she’s waiting for me to speak next in a conversation. I roll away from her, a task made difficult by the fact that I seem to have cocooned myself in my sheet while sleeping.

  ‘It’s three o’clock
in the afternoon,’ she says.

  ‘Thanks, but I have a clock.’

  ‘You planning on sleeping in all day?’

  ‘Is it an option?’

  She yanks the sheet and it unfurls from me like cotton from a spindle.

  ‘It’s been three months, Mira,’ she says, moving around the room, picking up dirty clothes between finger and thumb like they are contaminated. ‘You have to get on with your life, you understand? You have to learn to be strong.’ She sniffs one of my T-shirts to work out if it needs washing.

  ‘Mother of God!’ she says waving her hands around at the mess in my room. ‘What would your mum say?’ I have a sudden urge to jump up and rub that dirty T-shirt in her face but I just shut my eyes and curl up into a ball instead.

  Then I feel the mattress sheets being tugged from under me.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I say, sitting up and yanking them back. ‘Can’t you just leave me alone?’

  ‘I need to wash your sheets,’ she says eyeing me threateningly.

  ‘I am still using them,’ I say eyeing her back.

  ‘Listen,’ she says, jabbing me again with her finger. ‘I don’t have all day to sit around here and clean up your mess, understand? Get out of bed, give me these sheets and get the hell out of this house and do something so I can fix things up around here and go home!’

  ‘JUST GO THEN! NOBODY IS STOPPING YOU!’ I shout so loudly that I am sure the neighbours have heard me. Though I am so angry I think I could tear a hole in the wall, what I am really worried about is that I am going to start crying again and I know that if I start now I probably won’t be able to stop. I rip my T-shirt from her hands and stomp all the way to the bathroom where I slam the door and lean against it breathing hard and feeling violent. I hear Via’s steps coming closer. She knocks on the door.

  ‘WHAT NOW?’

  ‘What are you doing in there?’

  ‘Taking a shower.’

  ‘I need the laundry basket.’

  I pick up the basket, open the door and throw it out into the hallway so that it tips and spills clothes all over her feet. I slam the door again, but she puts her hand out and stops it before it can close.

  ‘You have to stop behaving this way, Mira.’

  ‘Just go away,’ I say pushing at the door but she holds it firm.

  ‘You think I want things to be like this? I know this is hard, but we have to work together to find a way through it.’

  I push harder and she eventually gives up and lets it close between us. I lean against it so she can’t open it again and slide down onto the floor. I can’t hear her, but I am sure she is still outside waiting for me to say something, but what am I supposed to say? She wants me out of bed, she wants me going to uni, she wants me eating and talking and smiling again like nothing has changed, but I can’t do it. Everything has changed and I am not going to pretend it hasn’t just so that she can feel better.

  ‘WHAT?’ I say when she knocks again. ‘Can’t I even take a shower in peace?’

  ‘Sure,’ says Siena. ‘But I thought you might like some breakfast first.’ I open the door to see her standing there with a smile and a bag of goodies from the bakery.

  ‘Haven’t you heard?’ I say once I am sure Via and the laundry basket are gone. ‘It’s three o’clock in the afternoon.’

  ‘Afternoon tea then?’ she says taking out a jam donut for herself then handing me the bag. ‘So what’s Via done now?’

  ‘She took my sheets and cleaned them.’

  Siena looks shocked. ‘The bitch.’

  ‘I was still sleeping on them.’

  ‘Give her a break, Mira. She’s under a lot of pressure,’ she says, looking in the direction of the kitchen where Via is rattling last night’s dishes. ‘There’s a lot to do around here and she has her own family to look after, not to mention she is back at work now.’

  ‘She should stay home then, I don’t want her here anyway.’

  ‘She won’t go until she knows you’re okay, Mira. If you want her off your back you need to show her that you can look after yourself.’

  ‘God, don’t you start,’ I say, heading to my bedroom because I feel like I need to lie down. ‘Why does everyone have to get so crazy about a pile of dirty clothes?’

  When I get to the door I remember that all my bedsheets and blankets have gone. I sit down on the bare mattress and it feels cold and unwelcoming. Siena sits down beside me and offers me the bag of pastries again but I push it away.

  ‘Look. No one is trying to hassle you. We just want to see you back to your old self and feeling a little better.’

  ‘My mother is dead,’ I say and I start to get angry because I feel myself tearing up again. I shove my hands under my thighs and rub my feet into the soft carpet. I am sick of crying. I am so sick of crying. ‘How can I ever feel better?’

  Siena puts a hand on my leg. I can see she is close to crying too. It wouldn’t bother me if she did. Siena’s tears are always gentle, and they don’t give you a sense of despair that can’t be lifted or seen through.

  ‘You will feel better. I want you to know that, Mira. As hard as this seems, you will have your life back, and you will feel love around you again.’

  ‘You sound like you’re reading from a script.’

  She squeezes my thigh playfully. ‘It’s the script of my life. I know what it’s like to lose a mother, especially when you’re young.’

  I look into her eyes, brown and earthy and glistening with tears. It’s like looking into a cool, clear billabong. I want to step into those eyes now, see the world from where Siena is standing and let my own frazzled mind and body just flop like discarded clothes.

  ‘How long until it gets better?’ I say and she laughs.

  ‘That depends. Time is only part of the healing. A lot of it is up to you and how you decide to handle things. You are fighting to keep everything the same, but it can’t be. It’s a new world and as much as we miss the old one, we all need to adjust to how things are now.’

  She goes to my wardrobe and pulls out some fresh sheets and blankets. I get up, thinking she is going to make my bed for me, but she hands them to me instead.

  ‘You have to start somewhere,’ she says and I know she’s trying to make me smile but all I am feeling is shame that I didn’t think of doing this for myself. ‘I’ll talk to Via, see if I can get her to back off a bit, okay?’

  ‘Whatever,’ I say, thinking that unless she can give Via some sort of personality transplant she’s got no chance.

  ‘You can come to the restaurant with me if you like.’

  ‘Not today. I don’t think I could handle seeing real people right now.’

  ‘I understand. I’m off tomorrow night. Maybe I can bring over a video and some ice-cream and we can hang out.’

  She gives my shoulder a final squeeze before leaving. I stare at the freshly pressed sheets in my hand and realise it’s a set I haven’t seen in a while. There’s a good chance that my mother washed and folded these sheets, and it seems weird to be holding them. In holding them, am I somehow able to hold her again? It bugs me that with every clean and wash this precious evidence of her is disappearing. I suddenly feel very tired. I lie down, using the sheets as my pillow. Outside Via begins vacuuming and clanging furniture, and I moan because I know that it won’t be long before her search for dirt leads her once again to my room.

  Then the phone rings.

  Via continues vacuuming, and I realise she hasn’t heard it. I put the folded sheet over my head, but I can still hear it ringing. After a while it stops and I pull the sheet from my head and concentrate on getting back to sleep. Then it starts again.

  Fuck it.

  I throw the sheet across the room. It lands in the wastebasket. I wonder how long it will take someone to find it. I check that Via is somewhere other than where I am, then step quickly to answer the phone.

  ‘Mira it’s me,’ says Felicia, sounding tentative and speaking softly as though my grie
f makes me susceptible to being startled.

  ‘I can tell who you are, Felicia.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Sorry.’ She clears her throat. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Great,’ I say. ‘On top of the world. Never felt better. You?’

  Silence.

  ‘Is there something you wanted, Felicia?’

  ‘Not really, Mira. I just wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘Well, as you can see, I’m not in much of a talking mood.’

  ‘Sure. I understand.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s possible.’

  More silence.

  ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Wait, Mira. Can you just listen for a second?’

  I snort. ‘Oh wow! You got a whole second for me? I guess Guido isn’t around anymore, huh?’

  ‘That’s not fair, Mira. I didn’t know what was happening with you. You never told me your mother was sick.’

  ‘Oh I see. And if I had you would have spent more time with me, right? I don’t need your pity, Felicia.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean,’ she sighs. ‘Look, I’m your friend. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘You think you can help me? This isn’t some exam I need to pass. You can’t help me with anything. My mother is dead.’

  I grip the phone harder in my hands. It’s the strangest feeling, to not want something and want it at the same time. I want to smash this receiver against the wall until I can’t hear Felicia’s squeaky little voice anymore, and I want to hold it close to my ear and listen to her breathing and never hang up.

  ‘I just want you to know I am here for you, okay?’

  I hear her sniff and realise she is crying. I am crying too. Oh God, when will I stop crying? For a while we say nothing, and it’s probably the only part of this conversation that makes any sense because as far as I am concerned, there is nothing to say.