Darkness more visible

by Finola Moorhead

  'Who?' I replied. 'Who is they?'

  'Us, you and I. The next generation, those whose mothers are contemporaneous with feminist second-wavers, who are themselves now beyond youth. Perhaps you are older than I am, anyway. Penny is.'

  'I reckon.'

  'Safe houses, refuges, abortion reform, child care and women's health centres was a mop-up operation, intelligent women soon got bored with it. Even though the need is as desperate as ever. Penny and I, we share knowledge of motherhood, the blame and the glorification. Maria and I, too.'

  'You knew Maria was Sofia's mother?' I felt angry that I did not have this information sooner.

  'Uh ha,' she nodded. 'Maria died of despair. No, she couldn't change and times changed. Feminism itself didn't expect us to be superwomen, work and have children. Maybe they didn't think about it. While the men turned out to be wimps, absent, sperm donors or SNAGs giving up the responsibility for opening doors and bringing home the bacon, crying at the drop of a hat…'

  Alison's passion was dissociated, distanced. She continued the mannerism of gracious ladies with time on their hands taking tea on a balcony, fiddling with long gloves, faking supreme disinterest in the affairs of men, and conveyed it so well I almost believed the rubber was fine kid. Yet, she seemed duty-bound to educate me.

  'Has Chandra asked you to feel me out about my sexual politics?' I interrupted.

  Imperceptibly affirming my suspicion, she went on, 'Crumbs were tossed towards cultural activities, as if to keep the libbers happy and in a small group, growling at each other.'

  'For godsake, Alison!'

  She continued, serenely. 'So feminism became a generational fashion; similar to the suffragette era. Faddish in the sense of having a style of dress and thinking, easily caricatured. The thread of discourse remains, of course, but it's a skinny thread from before and persisting through Matilda Joselyn Gage and continued in embattled publishing, reading and writing. Of this string a small percentage is fresh, most is research and recovery. So the discourse is penned in the patriarchy. If you look at The City of Women or Gilman's Herland, or the lives of artists and doctors, women scientists, the expression of female human brilliance has a small paddock on the planet. So small each woman is close to the fence.'

  She got up and strolled to the rail. To the edge. 'I wonder who Maria left her library to,' she murmured. Her body was like the character of self in dreams, an expression of mentality. Her thoughts were running away with her.

  'It's all a trial, it's all so bad,' she finished a sentence I didn't hear. 'Motherhood is under attack from the birth doctors.' She floated back to me. And stared into my eyes. 'One is actually called Dick Seed, Margot. Dr Richard Seed said last year something to the effect of "reprogramming the DNA is the first serious step in man's becoming one with god".'

  That was so ridiculous I laughed. A smile would crack Alison's poetic persona so she looked serious. She put her thin hand to her chin like a lady writer in a photograph with eyes that penetrated surfaces. She was certainly away with the fairies.

  'What amazes is our ability to live fooling ourselves.'

  'Perhaps they don't really fool themselves, mothers I mean,' I said. But she was carrying on a conversation with someone else.

  'Mothers are alone. Surrounded and alone. Out on a limb with responsibility which no one else ever shares. To get help we must compromise, bend over, beg, belittle ourselves, become tyrants or bitches and help is generally exactly what we ask for. No more. Not an inch extra.'

  We were the only customers at the kiosk, the gusty on-shore wind too cool for swimmers and idlers.

  'Penny and I, though we speak and touch hands, cannot be friends, ever. We are mothers and our hearts are taken up, with grief, with worry, whatever. Maria…' she choked down on whatever she was going to say, and pulled herself together. 'Tilly, I told you, thinks she killed Neil. Normally she would have been with me today. In fact Penny asked me where she was the other day. I lied, naturally. Tilly is so open, she would have spoken about Neil, taken the blame. You see, they hated each other. Neil would dress up in his magician's cape with black lipstick and red paint and false fangs and frighten her with tales of vampires. You could see he enjoyed it and any other kid he may have amused.' Alison sighed. 'But Tilly said, "I hate you, I wish you would die." Fully believing, as I have told her, wishes come true.'

  A sudden fear for Tilly passed through my mind. I recalled the distress I felt when I saw the bruises on her back. The anger, the desire for revenge, must be far deeper for her mother. How much did Neil hurt Tilly or how much did Alison think he did?

  'I can't share Penny's grief. You see?' She sat down. 'For Neil.'

  Our cups and saucers came, with serviettes and assurances that it wouldn't be long. It was, actually, taking ages.

  'That's an odd thing to say,' I frowned. Alison was almost insane with sorrow, but was it for Maria or the woe of motherhood?

  'A woman like Penny Waughan's needs are greater than she realises. She does perceive they are not really met and that she'd better bloody put up with the best she can get. So she lays down the law, convincing herself that her real needs are nothing. Indeed, she couldn't say what they were. She is a sad sack. Now it's okay. There's a cause. The charade gets deeper, more embedded in phoney connections. How can you share feelings with a woman like that?'

  My hot water and pot of tea arrived. I pulled out my spiral notebook and wrote: A touch of the viper about Alison Hungerford! 'Go on,' I suggested, making it obvious that now I had a pen in hand.

  'No naming does not mean no essence, no reality, no existence, no meaning. Hormones have their expression. The female self as a physical organism is in constant change. It has a rhythm which responds to the needs of the moment, to the seasons of time and the flux of the moon. Because of the paucity of words these feelings are not communicated in the woman's daily intercourse. The actual demands on her time often fight with the ups and downs within. Temper, depression, guilt, dismay, maybe even enviable bliss, are there but never accurately said in words, so a language of excuse, apology, cunning, cajoling disguises truth.'

  Theory reflecting personal experience, I put in brackets. She sugared the froth of her cappuccino without stirring it in. Watching the sugar slowly sink grain by grain through the sprinkle of chocolate, she continued, 'Ideally the conditions of the birth of a person should be a topic of conversation throughout the individual's life, a constant reference, an intimate knowledge, as people refer to their stars in dealing with emotional upsets in their lives, or accidents. But, like breast-feeding in public places, it is embarrassing. Like the slimy bloody placenta, the details of one's birth are buried soon after and life is carried on with in ignorance. Or lies. Parallel stories of their children's babyhood is all once removed, just chatter, not real connection. Even in their absence, it accommodates men and their eternal ignorance of the experience of childbirth. Also it takes away from the child his birth, as it were. He just lands in life. The womb as real to him as the pouch of a stork. His mother, a cabbage. If he were culturally required to carry in his mind the details of his birth, as an ancient mariner carries the caul he was born with, he could not hate women as much as he does. To come to the ideal, I imagine, would mean overcoming the thick strata of prejudice and tradition to ritual cleansing. He washes his hands of his birth. He washes his hands of the woman's labour, he washes the blood away.'

  She performed the famous Lady Macbeth scene trying to get the spot of blood from her palm. Alison is so versatile, so riddled with talents, I reached for her hand to search for the stigma. There were small calluses on the ridges—from scrubbing Penny Waughan's floor?—no deep hollows or spongy mounds, plenty of shallow criss-crossed lines. I remembered she read palms. I made a joke about the lecture, my taking notes and encouraged her to go on.

  'As the ever-present male fibs about his birth, amnesia washes through the woman's brain. She is left with strange feelings of emptiness and fullness that have reason but no rhyme. S
he is not given time to ponder the problem, she is beset by practical demands. Motherhood is busy. Chandra made me read the books. She thought it would help. It made me hate. Most mothers have no time to read. Whether or not we have the mental space. This is all leading to the fracture in relationships of women to women. A mother is alone, but she is always relating, not necessarily out of love. If she loves another woman, her ability to express that love is limited by the freedom she has to do it. Even adult children make demands on her that she is mostly powerless to refuse.'

  Eventually we did talk about Maria and the night Neil died. 'I've been around too much death lately.' Again the abstract contemplation drew her eyes to gaze at the clouds.

  The sails of a yacht listing in the stiff breeze moved swiftly along the horizon, a modern mariner.

  'Did you have any of the pills that were handed out so generously that night?' I asked.

  'I had Lenny. I hadn't been there very long. I didn't. No,' she shook her head.

  'Why not?' I persisted.

  She shrugged, plainly thinking it was a stupid question. 'I'm like an orchestra. Sometimes I can't stand the din in my head. I know how to play every instrument, but I don't know how to conduct. Or when I am a fiddler I am not the percussionist. Neil was going to die young. I already knew that.'

  'How?'

  'His palms. I did not tell Penny, but I thought Neil was a marked boy. There's more death to come.' How mad was this Alison? How much do I believe, or merely believe that she believes? I raked back my fringe. 'The gods love those who die young. They're special, really special. There is another death.'

  'Whose?' The waitress came with our sandwiches and asked if everything was all right; did we want anything else? Alison ordered another cappuccino. I thought about herb tea and settled for water. I trained my eye on a surfer who was braving the red weed. The wind whipped up ponies' tails behind the breakers. Alison wanted to tell me about this hand, so she asked to see mine. I said there are only four lines, two across and two down and nothing much else. 'Tell me about the hand you have read?'

  'Maria had thick short fingers, puffy at the base, meaning, ironically, she considered her own comfort before others. Small, weak nails, broken lifeline in both hands and equivalent breaks in the head and heart. But she was a goddess, as well. The health line pierced the lifeline. When I read her palm I knew she was going to die soon. And, of course, she did.'

  'Do you want me to do anything?' I can't help myself; if I can prevent a tragedy I'll try.

  'I don't know what to do with all the knowledge. It makes me sick.' She looked at her own palms. 'There is no sickness here, but I am racked at times with chronic fatigue syndrome and Ross River fever.'

  'Are you okay now?' She nodded. 'By the way.'

  'Yes?'

  'How come you're carrying your cleaning gloves?'

  She laughed, 'What's the time?'

  I told her and observed the surfer carrying his board up the beach. Alison drained her coffee. Abruptly she got up, grabbing her gloves. Distractedly paced, forth and back. The wind started to get fiercer, from the south. 'Not enough money, never enough money. Look at me! Should I have to deal with the grubby necessity of money?'

  'It's okay, Alison. Calm down. I'll pay. Don't worry.' I had to think of something pleasant to ground her. 'Do you play a musical instrument?' The smile I expected came over her face; she nodded.

  She pointed her finger at me. 'The sleuth! You're not stupid are you? Yes, I play the Irish harp and sing in Gaelic.' She put down the gloves.

  'Here is a nice place to sing me something. Stand over by the railing and I'll imagine I'm in Galway or somewhere.' It was an inspired guess: if she used orchestra as a symbol for her inner being, I just wondered whether that was anchored in actual musicality. It had the desired result of removing Alison's agitation.

  'Okay.' She laughed. She shifted personality, purpose, as a driver moves a gear-stick.

  A serious singer, she did a couple of vocal exercises, took up a position with the ocean behind her and sang in the highest voice I have ever heard live. It wove in and out of the wind in the overhead wires and the waves' crashing. When she finished, fading into the rhythm of the rollers pounding the shore, the waitress clapped behind me. Her voice came from somewhere in the mists of Erin, too airy to anchor anything.

  She sat down again. She looked directly into my eyes. I could see she was worried. The waitress came over with another cappuccino, 'On the house,' she smiled. Alison thanked her quickly and blushed. She looked down at her palms again.

  'What would you do? I mean, if you were me?' she asked. 'We slept together. She was elemental and self-indulgent, but solid in generosity. She was so much like a rock, I felt like the sorrowful Ariadne cast upon it in hostile seas.'

  If I said anything at all, it would be misinterpreted because I saw she was mad.

  'I am jealous, mischievous, meddling. Violent, so likely to get bashed up. What time is it?' she asked again.

  Looking at my wrist-watch, I answered. She felt for her gloves.

  Alison's shoulders sank into a kind of despair, a gesture that added years to her age, 'Harold! I have three children by three different fathers. Harold is my eldest. He is like his father, a barbarian.'

  She grabbed her purse and showed me a photograph of her children. Only Tilly looked at all like her. Harold was big and blond. Lenny, except for his blue eyes, Aboriginal and fine-boned. She spoke speedily. 'I rejected him. He became violent. He went away. He came back, threatened me, hit Tilly and then we went to Chandra's for refuge. Lenny stayed with his father's family, who are just great. The stress of it all exhausted me. Now, its beyond all that.' She got up. 'Look I've got to go.'

  She ran off along the boardwalk.

  'Where can I contact you?' I called after her. She spun around with the timing of an actress, gestured with her arms: another stupid question. I had contacted her today, hadn't I? Alison made me feel so dumb.

  I walked along the beach ruminating. I could see a fragile and beautiful teenager, Alison, made pregnant by a large, fair-haired brute of Northern European extraction. First, in a domestic violence situation, then, probably a single mother eaten up by the demands of a rapacious son, whom she probably loved to distraction. I could see this boy spoilt with mother love for a few years, then rivalled by the arrival of a half-brother, a light-framed, dark-skinned boy. I began to feel like a profiler, but I had had some training in this method as it related to the criminal mind. The boy has a boy's anger which, at first, probably expressed itself in tantrums that, while he was small, adults could control. Then his mother stops relating exclusively to men, she is changing, maturing. Her music and whatever else she is into does not impress this growing lad; he demands more. When Tilly comes into their lives, he is probably at the difficult age of thirteen or fourteen. He has the choice to adore his little sister or hate her, to protect her or abuse her. The lad has a moral choice, a dilemma, but he is like his father, a barbarian—strange word, she used. He has barbaric solutions. Something must have happened and he goes away. He comes back demanding, and, if he does not get satisfaction from his mother, punishing. Tilly is the spitting image of Alison. Tilly takes blows intended for Alison. I created the personality of a committed misogynist, Harold, Alison's first-born.

  Then, making my way between the ebbing surf and the drying red weed on the tide line, I thought about this Ariadne cast upon the rock. What an image! I began to think Alison some kind of genius. Where do such self-destructive leanings begin? Whose is the imminent death? But I don't know whether I believe in fortune-tellers of any brand.