This is going to sound so awful, so pathetic, but for a few seconds there, I feel panicky. Like I want to run away. Like if I stay there, I’m going to throw up or faint or scream. Until now, I’ve thought people only looked like that if they were in a school history documentary about concentration camps. Or on TV adverts to get you to donate your spare coins to people starving in Africa.
But this person isn’t safely removed on a TV screen, in another country, or in a history-book war. This person isn’t tucked away in black-and-white footage of something that happened long ago that we can all feel bad about yet smugly non-responsible; he’s not something we can study, write boring essays about and do annoying exams on and then tidy away neatly into a corner of our brains so that our hearts can remain detached.
This is John, right here, right now, in an Australian city, in a neat unit that smells of men’s cologne, chamomile tea and disinfectant. This is John, in a shirt collar that curls limply around his thin neck; whose jeans flare around thin legs; whose smile looks like a snarl in a face that’s only skin, veins, sores and large teary brown eyes; whose breath wheezes as if his heavy lungs are canyons of wind tunnels.
School gave us lots of facts about HIV/AIDS, but it didn’t give us the living of it, the presence of it. It told us not to be scared of getting infected from tears, sweat, saliva and toilet seats. But no one spoke about how infectious sadness, fear and anxiety can be when you’re finally a metre away from a person edging the abyss of an AIDS-related death.
Now I know why Wei Lee and Zi Don went quiet in the car as we pulled up, why they sighed and momentarily clasped hands before getting out of the car. I’m watching years of friendship and dreaded anticipation of this stage of the illness deal with its arrival.
I watch Mick tenderly move John’s body so he can stay comfortable, carefully help him sip lukewarm chamomile tea from a straw and stroke the trembling fingers that now and again do a wild dance in the air. Mick gently weaves John’s fingers together, encircles them lovingly with his own steady hands and waltzes them down to John’s lap.
I’m watching years of loving regardless of, medicating for and battling against, now meshing for the final phases.
The conversation proceeds slowly in snarled smiles and whispered syllables from John, and clear and warm measured phrases from Wei Lee and Zi Don. Meanwhile Mick’s serving more chamomile tea, interpreting, now and again reaching out to be hugged, squeezed, nodded at by Wei Lee and Zi Don, invisible light rays of relief and energy passing into him from them.
I say little. Mick has shaken my hand, given me a glass of Coke and made me comfortable on a stool near John. Wei Lee and Zi Don have pulled large colourful cushions over so they can sit close to John, stroke his legs, weave their calming fingers into his dancing ones.
John managed to find my face when I was introduced to him, locked me into a strong long gaze and snarled his smile at me. I worked hard to see it as the smile he wanted it to be. He raised a shaking hand into the air, wanting mine. I met his hand with my own shaken-up one, touched his cold clammy wafer-thin skin, and gently helped him lower his hand back to his lap where the other fretted, waiting to be clasped into motionlessness again.
Just for a fleeting second, despite school Health Ed, despite logic, despite hating myself for this, I think about germs, deadly AIDS germs coagulating with his clamminess and sticking to my fingers, parachuting with his wheezy breath to my nose and mouth, invisible pinpoints of lethal poison diving into my throat and lungs and beginning to rot me.
So there I am staging a battle inside myself, a rational me versus an hysterical me, while those fingers of mine that have touched him sit very still and stone heavy in my own lap, forbidden to come anywhere near my mouth or eyes or nose. An invisible tattoo is stamped on the back of my hand reminding me to seize the first opportunity to scrub at it.
There’s all this loser-like turmoil inside me while the outside Pathetic Pina sits very still, listening and watching. But every now and again, John’s watery eyes and his wheezing get too much for me. I escape by looking up at a painting of a tightrope-walker on the wall behind him. It shows a taut muscular body in black leotard against a blue sky arched by a rainbow. Curly black shoulder-length hair flows in a breeze. His arms extend out, fingers dance gracefully. His mouth smiles defiantly, his large brown eyes in golden brown skin are fixed on a point in the distance, the rope fading ahead of him, an end I strain to see.
I know the tightrope-walker’s face. That’s John before. John with lots of hair. John with skin the colour of dark honey. John with deep large eyes that must’ve made lovers float in their lagoons. John with a smile that beamed and didn’t snarl. John with a sculpted athletic body, with fingers that gracefully swept the air around him.
When I look down again, John has closed his eyes, his wheezing has lessened. He seems to have dozed off, his fingers slowed to a frequent flutter.
Wei Lee, Zi Don and Mick sit whispering about him. Phrases stab at me in between the wheezing. ‘He knows he hasn’t got long.’ ‘Yes, he wants the Amman from the mosque to organise his burial.’ ‘No, he hasn’t told his family yet.’
John sleeps on. The three of them look over some funeral preparations and legal documents Zi Don’s preparing in case John’s family tries to intervene. John has appointed Zi Don the executor of his will. He’s also the person who will break the news to John’s family and give them a letter from John that explains everything. Gently or firmly, depending on what will be needed, Zi Don will insist on fulfilling John’s funeral requests.
It’ll be Zi Don who introduces Mick to the family, at last, after five years, for the finales. Zi Don will reveal that John was never working for an airline that required him to travel overseas for lengthy amounts of time; that their son hardly ever left the same city. He was just spending part of his time living on the other side of Melbourne, they in Broadmeadows, he in Prahran, a part of Melbourne that could’ve been on the other side of the earth, for his family would never go there. ‘Too many poofters, druggies, bludgers,’ they would say, according to Mick. I can hear them. They sound like my nonna.
In this part of the shared city, John lived and loved with his partner. Although now his family thought he’d gone away for much longer on a working holiday. I can’t help but think John had been right in putting it that way. It was a kind of holiday, but hard work letting go of the daily grind of living. Dying for him must be like a painfully necessary, painfully adventurous working holiday.
It’ll be Zi Don who’ll answer John’s family’s shocked questions about his flight attendant ID card: that it was false.
Was it really false? I think as I listen to them. It was a travel card, at least – a passport giving him permission to travel from one home to another within the same city, from outer to inner Melbourne for a few days a fortnight to be with his partner, who is also family. Although the laws and religions haven’t quite caught on to that yet.
I listen, stunned by the lies and the ruses organised, played out, in order that John could live his many truths of wanting to be all the bits he was: Muslim, Lebanese, a member of a family with brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces; a man with religious beliefs even if his mosque said he had no place in there; and a man in love with a devoted partner who for five years had agreed to have him come and stay with him only part-time, had put up with secrecy and silences, and now cared for him in his last days, because even though he didn’t understand the need for such convolutions, he loved John and met him on the borders. Prahran and Broadmeadows. Separate lives in a shared city … ethnic families … meeting on the borders … and there is my mother, another tightrope-walker …
I’m called back when Zi Don realises they’re missing an important legal document and photos of John and Mick’s shared possessions, such as furniture and jewellery. The document and the photos need to be signed by all of them, including John, in order to ensure that Mick is recognised and acknowledged by John’s family as h
is partner. There’s no time to waste. They need to go into Don’s city office to get them.
I find myself thinking what would happen to Nathan if my mum died. He wouldn’t be legally or religiously recognised as her partner, even though he’s been around for over a decade. The only recognition would be whatever document my mum had written and signed, and that would only be accepted if Dad – or Leo and I, if Dad’s not around either – agree to recognise it. The thought of having such power to ignore or deny someone else’s relationship disturbs me, even though the relationship itself also disturbs me. Stupid and chilling unwanted questions invade me: if my mum died, where would Nathan sit at the funeral? Who would he cry with?
Mick’s urgent voice breaks into my thoughts. ‘Pina, would you be able to stay here with John? We won’t be long. I really don’t want him alone.’
‘Yeah, sure,’ I say even though my heart dives and immediately I’m thinking: he’ll die! He will die while you’re gone and I’ll be alone here with his body. And why doesn’t Wei Lee offer to stay? But I can’t ask that or I’ll give away my childishness. I look at her, hoping to prompt her into offering to stay with me. But instead, she catches my eyes with an encouraging smile.
‘Call if anything happens, but I think he’ll sleep. We should only be an hour,’ Mick says.
But of course, you know it’s not going to be that simple. They’ve only been gone about ten minutes, which have already stretched achingly long. I’ve sat there superglued to my chair, eyes reading John’s face, ears monitoring the wheezing breaths, now desperately hoping they don’t fade away even though a while ago I was wishing that noise would stop. I’ve watched the slight palpitation of his pulse where his skeletal shoulder meets the folds of skin on his neck. I’ve prayed that the thump keeps pulsing.
After a few more long minutes, the wheezing suddenly erupts into a spluttering cough that has John’s body heaving and dry-retching. All I can do is reach for a face towel nearby and hold it to his mouth and nose, while his fingers dance frenetically in the air in front of him, over my face, over his own face.
I want to scream and cry and not be here. But I am here. No one else is. And amid this confusion I see my mother and the aged people she cares for.
Finally, so achingly finally, even though it’s only been thirteen minutes since everyone left, John slumps back, exhausted. He whispers, ‘Water, please.’ I find his drink, hold the straw to his mouth and notice my fingers tremble. He sips slowly, faintly.
When he’s finished, he slumps back, eyes closed. I can’t hear any breathing. I bolt upright, freeze, stare into his face, asking loudly, ‘Are you all right?’
Suddenly, there’s a basket of damp twigs, his fingers, squeezing gently around my hand. John nods. His head tilts upward slightly, eyes scanning the room for Mick.
‘They’ve gone to Don’s office to get stuff,’ I explain. ‘They’ll be back real soon.’
He nods and stares at me, smiling/snarling. I begin to blush with the knowledge that he knows I’m uncomfortable, that he knows I’m terrified, that he knows I’m frantically wanting everyone back so I can wash my hands, those hands that have held the face towel to him, that have helped him with the straw, that have felt slight drops of spit on them, leaving my hands feeling soaked in acid.
John’s smile stretches. He tries to sit up a little. ‘Don’s spoken about you … often,’ he says slowly and steadily.
I nod and blush deeper and deeper as he sees deeper and deeper into me.
‘About your family.’
I nod again. I look away, up to the tightrope-walker. Please, please go back to sleep, please, please let me hear that wheezing before I look down again.
‘You like that painting?’
‘Yeah. It’s you.’ How did that get suddenly blurted out? Stupid nerves, they zap thoughts into speech along some electric current.
But John smiles wider, sadly. ‘He’s many of us … like your uncle.’ He pauses and wheezes, his eyes blinking slowly to water his drying eyes. They open again, shining with the tears.
I don’t know why I begin to cry –
– because maybe it’s all too much?
– because soon he won’t be alive in this world of lies and silences and has never had the exquisite experience of knowing the world as otherwise?
– because I know he can see the end of the tightrope?
– because my mother is still on that tightrope somewhere too?
– because even now, I want to stay firmly on the ground rather than take her hand and walk with her?
– because one day Mum will get close to the end of the tightrope and will never know what it was like to feel the rope flatten into a comfortable peaceful path?
I cry, and drops fall onto my hands, so still, in my lap. John’s hand rises, fluttering and clammy and bony, to my bowed head, to stroke my hair.
‘I have something. I’d like you. To have it. I’m giving special things. Away. I didn’t know who to give this to. I thought Don. But now I know … it’s for you.’
I look up. I wipe my tears, and only then do I stop and think: I wiped my eyes and my mouth with my fingers.
That thought now seems so stupid, and I can’t be bothered with my neurotic self any more.
John’s pointing to the mantelpiece. ‘Box.’ I get up, follow the fluttering finger. A green velvety jewellery box, big enough for a watch to be curled into. I hold it out to him. His left palm opens to receive it and the fingers of his right hand try to open it. ‘You open. It’s yours already, see? I can no longer …’
Inside is a multicoloured fissured crystal, shining in the dim light of the room in hues of purple, pink, silver, gold and green. It’s cradled in a thick wad of cotton wool.
‘Pick it up. Hold. Move it,’ John says. I feel its many edges with the fingers of my other hand. It catches and plays with the light in different directions and formations, the various angles reflecting and refracting.
John beckons me to show him the crystal. His finger jaggedly comes down into my cupped hands and feels the light on the stone, brushes against the soft cotton wool. His eyes are tearing up, my eyes are tearing up, blurring the colours into kaleidoscopic chaos. ‘You care for it … for me?’
I nod.
He nods, while his fingers flutter and dance above the crystal. ‘This is how. I protected my family. Cushioned – already too many fractures. War, deaths, migration, poverty. Starting again. New country for us … to have a life they never had. This is how. I protected my life –’ and now his voice wavers more, yet the huge luminous eyes shine with dignity. ‘This is life, how I lived it.’ His fingers curl my fingers around the crystal. ‘How so many live it. Will remind you of the way we tried … so your generation … free yourself.’
He turns to face the mantelpiece again. ‘There, my ID card.’ I get it with my free hand, the other nestling the warming cotton and crystal. There’s a photo of the handsome tightrope-walker version of John in an airline’s uniform. He shakes his head slowly. ‘Take this too. One final trip soon … won’t need lies.’
An ID for a truth, a reality that John spoke into existence with his family, a space with no name, beyond Broadmeadows and Prahran, that allowed him to live in both, yet not belong slavishly to either. Like the power of a crystal – reflecting, refracting, renewing.
I wipe away more tears with the back of my hand, the ID card grazing my forehead, and look to John. He’s closed his eyes again, but the smile is more resolute, pleased. He’s soon asleep from the exertion of speaking, giving me gifts, crying with me, comforting me.
I sit quietly looking at the tightrope-walker, the ID card and crystal in my cupped hands. I no longer cry. I’m no longer afraid of infection. Indeed, I’m glad of the infection I’ll come away with today, of knowledge, a new awareness. But I’m still afraid of this world of hurt and hiding that I never knew existed within. How many people see the wrapping and think they’re seeing the world, while the real gift of seeing life and love in al
l its devastating beauty lies waiting inside?
We leave soon after Zi Don and the others return. I show them my gifts and say a little about our conversation. Mick smiles through tears and gently kisses John’s forehead without waking him.
‘He’s shedding parts of himself through this giving away of things that were special to him. He’s had those up there on the mantelpiece just waiting for the right person to come along.’
John’s ID card slides neatly next to my school ID card in my wallet. I don’t need to tell you which one feels more real.
Before we leave, Wei Lee and Zi Don kiss and stroke John, who stirs enough to acknowledge them with a butterfly flutter of those fingers over their faces.
I kiss him too, feel that cold clammy skin on his cheek, but when I move back, his eyes are alive and peaceful as he smiles at me.
I won’t see John again. I know that, and that knowledge weighs like a brick inside me. I’ll walk out of his home today and someday soon he’ll leave this earth completely.
We drive away silently, after Wei Lee and Zi Don hold the weeping Mick closely, making him promise to call them as soon as John has passed away. Passed away? No, gone home. Become all of himself.
It’s very still in the car. Muffled sounds of the outside try to seep in. There’s a light rain in the humid heat, making the inside of the car steamy. The backs of Wei Lee and Zi Don’s heads don’t move around in their usual animated chatter or sway to music. They look straight ahead. Only once does Zi Don slam an open hand against the steering wheel. Then he wipes his eyes and forehead with the same hand, afraid at the intensity of his fury.
‘Why am I heading off to Adelaide to play stupid games when Mick and John …’ His voice chokes.
Wei Lee’s hand reaches out to his thigh and rests there. ‘Because it’s time for you to resolve things too. And we’ll be there for Mick afterwards.’
That night, I eat little. I’m restless and can only stop fidgeting if I curl up in Zi Don’s arms on the sofa, the crystal curled in my palm. Wei Lee reads to herself next to us, music and wind chimes in the background.
Love You Two Page 18