Love and Vertigo

by Hsu-Ming Teo

  ‘God bless you, love,’ someone told me. ‘I love you in the name of the Lord.’

  ‘Thank you. That’s very kind of you.’ My mother had raised me to be polite to strangers.

  ‘Where do you come from?’ This from a thirty-something woman with a yard of brunette hair and big 1980s two-for-the-price-of-one budget glasses.

  ‘Burwood,’ I said.

  ‘No, I mean, where do you really come from? Originally?’

  ‘Helsinki,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, really? How interesting. Is that in Japan?’

  I looked around for my mother and saw her hugging another teenage girl just slightly older than me, kissing her on the cheek. Jealousy and misery simply swamped me. How could she give herself so completely, so intimately, to these people?

  ‘Hey, Grace.’ Sonny had come down from the stage, his trumpet clutched in his hand like an extension of himself. ‘How do you like it so far?’

  ‘Who’s that girl Mum’s talking to?’

  He looked to where I was pointing. ‘That’s Susan. She’s Mum’s prayer partner and spiritual daughter. Her own mum’s a junkie in rehab, I think. Something like that. She rings Mum up each week to pray and chat. Come and meet her if you like.’

  ‘Hey, Susan!’ he called out. He left me and walked over to Mum and Susan, who hugged him tightly. They made a neat little triangle that excluded me.

  The chorus leader clapped his hands. ‘All right, guys. We’re gonna praise the Lord some more and whip the

  Devil, right? Because we’re engaged in a spiritual warfare against the forces of darkness, but my bible says that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the army of the Lord! Thank you, Jesus! Are you with me, church?’

  They whooped and cheered loudly and the band swung into another song. Crashing chords from the synthesiser and jarring riffs from the guitars. Voices raised in shouting song and palms which stung from clapping time with the heartbeat of the drum. I looked in amazement at my mother and saw her arms upraised like the Village People doing ‘YMCA’. Many other arms stuck out vertically from the congregation too. Then, incredulously, I watched as people started hopping up and down, jumping and kicking out their legs as if they were in aerobics class. Yes, all over the auditorium bright blobs of colour were bopping up and down like those balls in the Lotto machine.

  ‘Mum, what do you think you’re doing?’ I hissed in an agony of embarrassment as my mother hopped awkwardly from one foot onto the other, like a duck with cold feet.

  ‘I’m dancing in the spirit,’ she huffed between jerky, uncoordinated lurches. What had happened to my mother, the waltz queen and cha-cha champion? Her arms were still upraised, her stiff fingers spearing and stabbing the air.

  ‘I don’t believe this.’

  Then the mood switched abruptly. The lights dimmed and the band softened, sweetened by the chimes on the synthesiser. Lulled into quiescence, I closed my eyes and heard people around me humming and murmuring love words to God and singing melodies of their own in a sort of baby language of ‘ga-gas’ and ‘goo-goos’. It should have been chaotic; a cacophony of clashing sounds. Instead it was unspeakably erotic, that tangling of strange tongues and twining of individual melodies. Waves and waves of it, flowing and ebbing, flowing and ebbing. The synth grew louder and the drumbeat stronger. It pulsated now, those hummed chords of melody intermingled with ecstatic cries of ‘Oh God! Oh Jesus! Sweet Jesus! Oh God, I love you!’. Louder and louder it grew. I felt my flesh tingle and my palms grow moist. The sound was pushing at the ceiling, pounding it with cries of ‘Hallelujah, Lord! Yes, sweet Jesus, yes!’. And then a tidal swell of music and voices, keen, sharp, edged with agonised rapture. Building, building, building up, up, up to a long crescendo and then—oh! Orgasmic. Simply orgasmic.

  The music died away, the voices drifted into a murmur and then silence; the lights overhead slowly brightened and the chorus leader melted away from the front of the stage. The minister of the church, Pastor Rodney Philippe, stepped up to the microphone, adjusted it and began to speak. I hardly heard a word he said. My body was quivering with arousal and my mind was like putty. I’d come to church, for Christ’s sake. The house of God and happy Christians. How could my underwear be damp? My face was burning with shame and guilt; I was sure everybody could see it. Throughout the sermon I gripped the edge of my seat and wondered whether God would strike me dead. And then, finally, something expected.

  ‘Church, let us pray.’

  I didn’t care about praying; I just wanted the service to end so that I could go home. But it didn’t end. They had this thing called an ‘altar call’ at the end of the service; sinners were invited to come up to the front of the stage to repent and be Born Again.

  ‘If anybody would like to give their life to God, please come up here right now. I know some of you may be scared,’ Pastor Rodney Philippe told us earnestly, ‘but don’t let that fear stop you. Some of you may think that you’ve got plenty of time to get your life right with God. Well, let me tell you this, guys: you simply can’t tell when God will call you home. I know a young man—we’ll call him Charles—who came to my meeting one night many years ago. Charles felt the call of God in his life. But, brothers and sisters, Charles was weak. “Let me have a few more years,” Charles told me, “then I’ll get my life right with God.”

  ‘But, brothers and sisters, Charles didn’t have a few more years. No. That night, when Charles left our meeting and headed down to Kings Cross, he was run over by a bus. Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, you cannot tell when your time will come. I am pleading with you, I am begging you to give your life to Christ now. If you want to do this, please stand up. Don’t be frightened. We all support you. Brothers and sisters, if you’ve brought a friend or a loved one along today, give them the support they need and stand up with them. Stand up for God.’

  ‘Ow!’ My arm was jerked and I was hauled upright to my feet. I looked about in alarm at the mosaic of bent heads around me.

  ‘Mum, what are you doing?’

  ‘Don’t you want to give your life to God, Grace? I’ll support you, you know.’

  ‘Mum, you’re embarrassing me.’

  ‘Grace, look at me. Let me do this one thing for you.’ Her eyes were pleading, eloquent with some kind of need I didn’t understand. ‘I want you to know the love of God, Grace. God never fails; he will never disappoint you, you know.’

  Everybody in the surrounding rows was looking at me now. What was that word I’d read just recently in Pride and Prejudice? Mortified. Like Elizabeth Bennett, I was mortified.

  ‘All right, Mum. All right.’

  She hugged me tightly. She was so pleased.

  ‘Grace,’ she said, ‘I am so proud of you.’

  She took my hand and led me down to the front of the altar where a dozen people were already thronged. Mum and I joined the holy huddle and let Pastor Philippe pray over us. We repeated the Sinner’s Prayer after him, and then I thought it was over. But no. Not yet. Like a Demtel two-for-the-price-of-one TV ad, there was more.

  ‘After this morning, the Devil is going to find ways of attacking you because you now belong to God. Well, let me tell you this. God loves you and he wouldn’t leave you without help. The Holy Spirit can help you in your walk with God. Do you want the gift of the Holy Spirit, brothers and sisters?’

  ‘Take it, Grace,’ my mother whispered in my ear, as if it was a shopping bargain and the salesman had just thrown in a free packet of steak knives.

  ‘Yeah, why not. Whatever.’

  ‘Brothers and sisters, the presence of the Holy Spirit will manifest himself to you. Some of you may be Slain in the Spirit. You’ll feel a warm, tingling glow all over you and you’ll fall irresistibly. But God won’t let you be hurt when you’re Slain in the Spirit. Others of you may receive the gift of tongues. Don’t resist it; it’s a very precious gift.’

  He started to pray over individuals, starting from the left side of the stage. I was on the right. He put hi
s hands on them and cataracts of tears poured down their faces. People began to drop like flies around me. On the ground, a carnage of Christians. Others burst out into an awful caterwauling. My heart pounded and I felt sick. I wasn’t going to be able to manifest the Holy Spirit and Mum would know that I was just a fake. She wouldn’t love me anymore; not like she loved Sonny, or that girl Susan. I simply had to manifest the gift of the Holy Spirit. Maybe I could just slip away. But then it was too late. Pastor Rodney Philippe was standing in front of me and his toffee eyes bored into my skull.

  ‘Don’t be afraid, Grace,’ he said gently as he put his large, slightly sweaty palms on my head and began to pray for me. It was simply dreadful. I was the last one left. Everyone else who had gone up to give their lives to God now lay comatose on the carpet or blabbing in teary voices.

  ‘Allallallallallallallallalla . . .’

  ‘Shooshooshooshooshoosh . . .’

  ‘Ticketyticketyticketyticketytickety . . .’

  What should I do? Fall back and risk concussion when I hit my head on the carpet because I wasn’t really Slain in the Spirit so God wouldn’t protect me from being hurt? Or babble? Babbling was easier, but what should I babble? And then, a lifetime of watching Saturday morning cartoons paid off in that urgent instant. Inspiration struck. I raised my hands stiffly in the ‘YMCA’ position and opened my mouth.

  ‘Scoooooby-dooby-dooby-dooby-dooby-dooooo! Scoobydooby-dooby-dooby-dooo . . .’

  ‘Hallelujah! Thank you, Lord!’ cried my mother.

  DELIVERING US FROM EVIL

  In the autumn of my fifteenth year Mum pleaded with Pastor Rodney Philippe and his wife, Josie, to come and cleanse our house spiritually. The Patriarch had decided to continue going to the bargain-basement warehouse Pentecostal church on Sundays. God had saved our souls but he couldn’t salvage our fraying family ties. We might be one in Christ, but we were pulling further and further apart. Mum was worried about Sonny; she feared that he was backsliding. He was seventeen, sullen and withdrawn. He was hardly ever home, choosing to spend most of his leisure time with his girlfriend. When he was home he hid in his room and played the trumpet all weekend. Chet Baker tunes crept out mournfully from under his closed door. He made snide remarks when the Patriarch quoted bible verses at us.

  ‘Don’t forget that your lives here are a preparation for the afterlife,’ the Patriarch nagged. ‘How do you expect to face God with such a smelly, untidy room, Sonny? You live in a pigsty. How can God welcome you to heaven? “In my Father’s house are many mansions . . .”’

  ‘And a good thing too. I bags the one furthest away from you,’ Sonny said.

  ‘Honour thy father and mother!’ thundered the Patriarch.

  ‘Fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath!’ retorted Sonny.

  ‘They bleed on both sides,’ I said. They both glared at me. Whoops. Wrong text and wrong timing.

  ‘Stop it,’ Mum begged. ‘Just stop it.’

  She decided that we all needed deliverance. She had been reading a book given to her by Pastor Philippe called Pigs in the Parlor, written by two Texan Baptists, Frank and Ida Mae Hammond. The simple thesis of the book was that the world was teeming with demons who, like bacteria, invaded our bodies and homes and stirred up contention and sinful thoughts and practices. The devil needed to be driven out of our lives. Deliverance would set us all free and turn us into one soppy, sentimental, huggy American sitcom family. ‘Does everyone need deliverance?’ demanded Frank and Ida Mae. Personally, they had never met anybody who didn’t. In the age of quick cash at the ATM, microwave meals and instant coffee, deliverance was a quick fix to family problems created through the sediment of different times, histories and cultures.

  Sonny and I awaited the arrival of Pastor Rodney and Josie Philippe with mixed feelings of awe, anticipation and dread; awe and anticipation because it was widely known among our Pentecostal circle that they specialised in spiritual warfare and the deliverance ministry; dread because we knew ourselves to be sinners tainted with the stain of sexual sin. We feared the supernatural revelation of our unnatural desires.

  Sonny was still plagued by horny thoughts about his non-Christian girlfriend Hwee Mei, who he’d met at a jazz nightclub. I know this because the Patriarch was renovating the upper section of the house and I had moved back downstairs into the guest room temporarily, which meant that Sonny’s room was now set back to back with mine. There was a musty, blackened, disused chimney in between. Late at night I could hear his groans of despair echoing eerily through the blocked-up flue of the chimney as he wrestled with his recalcitrant cock.

  ‘Oh Lord, Lord, I beseech you,’ he moaned in an access of abject remorse. I imagined his knobbly kneecaps scrubbing the synthetic pile of the carpet in front of the fireplace, his bum stuck into the air and his torso perpendicularly prostrate to the rusty grate as he sent prayers like wishes up the chimney to Father Christmas or Father God. Apologies rolled off his tongue.

  ‘Have mercy on me, a sinner. I’m sorry that I put my hand under Hwee Mei’s jumper last night and squeezed her boobs and stroked her nipples. I’m sorry I put my hands in her panties and was excited by her wetness. I’m so sorry! I repent of daydreaming that I was fucking her hard when I should have been concentrating on my trigonometry. And I’m sorry for saying “fuck” to you. Have mercy on me and forgive me. Remove my evil thoughts and wash my black heart white as snow. And please help me to remember the sine and cosine rules for my maths test on Thursday.’

  I lay in bed, still as a corpse, scarcely daring to breathe lest the expulsion of stale air should whisper up the flue and alert him to my wakefulness. Tension pulled my tendons taut as violin strings. The delicious thrill of the eavesdropper, the vicarious pleasure of second-hand sex, plucked my body like a bow and set it trembling. I listened as he groaned and fell into bed, tossed restlessly, then gave in to temptation and began to jerk off on his fantasies of fucking his girlfriend.

  I considered my own sexual fantasies at the time inferior to Sonny’s because they were based on fiction rather than fact. True, I’d been an accomplished masturbator for years now, ever since the Patriarch halted the Horlicks ritual. But that was automatic, more like thumb-sucking in many ways, really. I was still squeamish enough about sex to wish to cloak it in romance. Biology lessons had not helped either. Wanting to get ahead in science class to placate the Patriarch, I had thumbed through Gray’s Anatomy and had been horrified by the intricate interlacing of formaldehyde-brown muscles and white ligaments that formed the basin of the female perineum. I had seen cross-sections of wrinkled, withered, disembodied penises. Sliced and diced. These pictures, coupled with my knowledge of sweaty, slightly gawky private school boys who were always in need of a sock change, repulsed me from the idea of sex with some guy I actually knew. So I lay in the dark and listened to Sonny wanking instead.

  A frenzy of washing, scrubbing, dusting and general housecleaning had preceded the Philippes’ arrival, but less than half an hour after they stepped into the house, we learned that our efforts had not gone far enough. Josie sniffed the air and felt troubled and oppressed in spirit. After a heavy dinner of my mother’s famous fried rice noodles washed down with Chinese tea, Josie communed with God as she absently shelled lychees and popped the eyeballs of fruit into her mouth, sitting back and listening to the stutter of stilted conversation.

  Finally, she placed the teacup down and leant forward. ‘There’s something really wrong here,’ she said abruptly. ‘My heart is really burdened for this family. I feel a sort of . . . oppression in this household, and I believe it is affecting the family. The Lord has told me that, somehow, Satan has managed to get a foothold in this house.’

  My mother promptly burst into tears. Her face crumpled into soft folds which formed shallow channels for the rivulets that ran down her sodden cheeks.

  ‘It’s true, I know,’ she sobbed. ‘I opened the door for Satan to come in with my besetting sin. The Holy Spirit has convicted me of this many
times, but although I always repent, I always revert back to my extravagant ways. I can’t seem to stop spending money on clothes. I just love shopping.’

  Her voice cracked and quivered as the confession exploded from her. She disintegrated into a rambling litany of Dior scarves, Zampatti suits, Trent Nathan blazers, Country Road cotton shirts, cashmere cardigans and Oroton handbags.

  Josie eased herself out of her wooden chair and crouched beside Mum, slipping a plump, comforting arm around the shivering shoulders and discreetly moving a tissue box across the table so that it was within Mum’s reach. Slowly, the tormented sobs receded into hiccupping breaths, succeeded by a vigorous foghorn blowing of the nose.

  Meanwhile, I sat rigidly on my wooden chair, my gaze fixed on the shrapnel of fruit shells on the table. I was mortified and a little angered by my mother’s excessive and uncontrollable emotionalism. I had heard her confession of her besetting sins many times before and, although a very real and deep source of remorse to her, they had become vaguely reminiscent of corporeal embarrassments—like inadvertent farting, they were best not mentioned. They were not in good taste. Then I looked up and my heart plummeted further.

  Oh, for God’s sake, I thought. Sonny was hovering shyly by the doorway, hopping from one foot to the other, hoping that a small scrap of attention would be thrown his way. Too absorbed in his own besetting sin of lust of the flesh to be aware of our mother’s lust for clothes, he was completely startled by the sudden, staccato revelations of her private vice. That he was unhappy about this was perfectly clear to me. He obviously felt torn between sympathy for my mother’s plight—the empathy and secret relief of one fellow sinner for another—and annoyance that our mother believed her own trivial offences had opened the door to the Devil.