Love and Vertigo

by Hsu-Ming Teo

  I saw the shallow rise and fall of his thin chest and the reddening tips of his ears, and, aghast, I realised that he was psyching himself up to Confess. I was appalled by his stupidity, for there was no doubt in my mind whose besetting sin would draw down more wrath upon the sinner’s unfortunate head. Between profligacy of the purse and the stench of illicit sex, there could be no comparison. If he threw his cards down on the table and spread out his fantasies for us to see, the consequences would be of truly apocalyptic proportions, not only for him but for me as well, for his shame would also stain me in the Patriarch’s eyes.

  ‘All of you,’ the Patriarch always said. The ties of consanguinity were strengthened through collective condemnation by the Patriarch during our childhood. All of you need to clean up your rooms. They’re a disgrace. Who’s taken the scissors? All of you never put things back where they belong. Why didn’t you let me know you wouldn’t be home for dinner? All of you treat this house like a hotel. All of you deserve two tight slaps. All of you are good for nothing. All of you.

  In fact the only thing holding Sonny back was the Patriarch’s austere presence. Sonny’s eyes darted desperately from the Patriarch to Josie and back again. I willed him to look at me so that I could warn him with an urgent shake of my head. But it was no use. The urge to confess, to glory in the guilt of letting the Devil into the house, to abase himself in public, express his contrition and be absolved from his sins, comforted and assured that Father God still loved him and accepted him, even if the Patriarch didn’t—all this outweighed the inevitable scolding and punishment by the Patriarch. I could see him physically scraping up his courage to speak and, in my agony of fear, I could hear his thoughts racing frantically like mice in a maze.

  ‘Er, er, er, Josie.’ Sonny was stammering so badly that nobody paid any attention to him. Josie continued to stroke my mother’s bowed shoulders and murmur soothingly while my father looked at Rodney in helpless male discomfort at female tears. Then Josie spoke and Sonny’s moment was lost, swept away unremembered in the small eddies of excitement her next words conjured.

  ‘Be comforted, Pandora. The Lord has told me that the oppression doesn’t come from this family, but from the house itself. There is spiritual bondage in this house caused by the actions of the previous owners,’ Josie said gravely. She raised her eyes and looked each of us in the face.

  ‘The Lord knows that this is a godly household that fears and loves him. That is why he has sent Rodney and me to help you. Rodney?’

  Pastor Rodney Philippe closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and index finger as if he were repressing a sneeze. We waited in silence until he opened his eyes and peered myopically at us.

  ‘The Lord has confirmed to me what Josie is saying,’ he told us at last. ‘We need to go through this house, room by room, and cleanse them all in the blood of the Lamb. We need to break the hold of Satan and his minions in this household.’

  Collectively, we left the kitchen and trooped solemnly around our house. We started in the laundry, where Josie sensed the spirits of Mischief and Discontent.

  ‘Talk to them,’ she insisted. ‘Tell them that your lives and your minds are under Jesus’ protection and they can’t do their dirty work on you. Go take authority over them in Jesus’ mighty name. Don’t laugh, Grace. Resist the Devil.’

  So we held hands and claimed authority in Jesus’ name and exorcised the demons of Mischief and Discontent. From there we proceeded to the living room, where we booted out the spirits of Anger, Insolence and Dissension.

  ‘If any of you feel the urge to cough or throw up, don’t try to repress it,’ Josie told us. She was so excited. ‘Sometimes indwelling demons get blown out through your nostrils or they come out through your mouth.’

  We went from room to room identifying demons, gearing ourselves up for battle, pleading with God for his mercy and authority, shouting in strident triumph as we drove them wailing from the house. And then we entered Sonny’s bedroom.

  I could feel palpable waves of anxiety emanating from his tall, lanky frame. It wasn’t too hard to divine his dilemma. He both yearned for and dreaded the revelation of his lust-filled fantasies and semen-soaked sheets. To confess in front of the family, to voluntarily demonstrate to the world that he was a depraved and unworthy sinner come to true repentance, was one thing. To have those sordid secrets ferreted out and flung back as an accusation was another altogether.

  I, too, waited in gut-wrenching apprehension. For if Sonny had sinned, so had I sinned vicariously via the chimney flue. If by some remote chance God could actually reveal to Josie and Rodney Philippe Sonny’s vice, would not my own be similarly exposed? I had betrayed Sonny in eavesdropping on his agonies. Now I feared to lose his casual friendship. And again, I also feared the Patriarch’s reaction. Now I see that, to me, the Patriarch has always been god. He doled out the commandments in our household and I followed them dutifully most of the time and flouted them whenever I could. When I was caught out, if his anger could not be averted or sufficient propitiation made, I waited in resentful resignation for his wrath to fall upon my head.

  Rodney Philippe’s heavy brows slashed down in a deep V-shaped frown over his nose as he entered Sonny’s bedroom. His nose twitched slightly and, alarmed, I shot Sonny a quick glance. His face was drawn and white with terror and his mouth opened and shut uncertainly. He scarcely knew whether to pre-empt accusation by blurting out his confession, or to hope that God had not spoken to Rodney.

  Please God, please God, I gabbled in silent prayer.

  ‘There’s a heavy atmosphere in this room,’ Rodney began ponderously. ‘I smell something foul . . .’

  ‘Your shoes!’ the Patriarch roared. ‘I keep telling you to air your room and keep it tidy, Sonny, but you never listen to me. Now you see. Pastor Rodney can smell your stinking shoes.’

  And he was right. There they were, crowding the far side of Sonny’s room, eight pairs of shoes with their toes pointed to the corner of the wall in malodorous shame: black school shoes, Converse basketball boots, Nike running shoes, tennis sneakers, brown tooled-leather Windsor Smith lace-ups, black Doc Martens, hiking boots, and a battered pair of R.M. Williams riding boots. Stuffed into the school shoes and the Nikes were soiled sports socks. Despite the glimpses of stained and greying insoles, an unpleasant odour similar to Chinese salted fish permeated the untidy room.

  Mum was simply appalled. Her hand shot out automatically and her fingers reached for Sonny’s ear to twist and yank at it in a purely reflexive action. ‘How many times have I told you to change your school socks every day and put your dirty clothes in the laundry basket?’ she demanded, mortified at this evidence of her son’s lack of good hygiene practice, which might reflect on her mothering. ‘Pick them up right now and put them in the laundry. Go on.’

  Humiliated yet vastly relieved, Sonny did as he was told and we trooped out of his room. If there is a God, perhaps he sometimes looks down with compassionate eyes and intervenes.

  FALLING

  The Devil hadn’t been driven out of the home. Religion had failed to deliver. Despite Josie and Rodney Philippe’s best efforts, deliverance hadn’t worked. My family was falling apart. The Patriarch and Sonny could not talk without shouting at each other. Their conflicts were weighted with the bitter histories of arguments past. We sniffed the air and smelled their hatred; it leaked and polluted the house like toxic fumes, choking us with misery and numbing us into despair.

  The Patriarch wielded his frustration like a hammer to pound his family verbally. Church had not softened him; it only toughened his tendencies towards arrogance and domestic tyranny. His was a religion of rigid rules, constant con-condemnation and instant retribution. He lived a disciplined, morally upright life, practising dentistry in the daytime and pondering over doctrine in the evenings. His bible was always open, passages underscored, notes scribbled in the margins. He memorised bible verses and hurled them like javelins at our perceived failings. In th
e end he always fell back on: ‘Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.’ In this command western platitudes overlapped with eastern certainties in a way he found reassuring.

  But we were not the filial, obedient, slipper-fetching children the Patriarch had expected. When he compared our attitude towards him with his own respect towards his parents, he was simply bewildered. He remembered those backbreaking days of planting rubber seedlings, of whippings when he didn’t do well in his exams, of having to accompany his mother everywhere and cater to her every whim. And he wondered why we couldn’t see how lucky we were. Instead, we openly ridiculed his petty idiosyncracies and slapped him in the face with our perpetual sullenness. He was appalled at our cold rudeness, the way we turned and walked away from him when he was telling us off.

  ‘Don’t walk away while I’m talking to you,’ he said, his voice trembling from outrage laced with hurt. ‘That’s the rudest thing you could ever do to a Chinese father. If I knew you all would turn out like this I would never have given up my practice in Malaysia and immigrated to Australia. My old partner is now a millionaire.’

  ‘Your choice,’ Sonny said.

  ‘You’re ungrateful, good for nothing. If I spoke to my father like that I’d get two tight slaps.’

  ‘Big fucking deal. Go ahead. It’s not like you’ve never done it before.’

  ‘You’ve broken my heart. My eldest child and a son at that, turning out to be such a disappointment. After everything I’ve done for you, all the sacrifices I’ve made—’

  ‘Bullshit. You did it for yourself. I didn’t ask to be born and I sure as hell didn’t ask for you to be my father. I may be a lousy son, but you’re a fucking loser of a father.’

  ‘Get out of my house until you can treat your father with some respect.’

  Sonny dropped out of school just before his Higher School Certificate examinations. He and his girlfriend Hwee Mei moved into a small 1960s red brick unit in Enmore. He joined a jazz band and worked three nights a week playing in various pubs. During the day he unpacked boxes at the local supermarket while Hwee Mei finished her secretarial course at TAFE. He never came home and rarely called. I was desperately afraid of losing touch with him. Losing him.

  Each day after I finished school I caught a train from Burwood to Newtown and walked up Enmore Road until I reached the turn-off to their apartment block. I spent the afternoons hanging around that tiny one-bedroom flat. I vacuumed the dingy carpet and scrubbed out the bathroom. I piled dirty clothes into a large garbage bag and hauled them to the laundromat at the end of the street. I did my homework to the monotonous rattle and whirr of washers and dryers spinning clothes clean. I lugged the garbage bag home and sorted out the laundry, neatly pairing stiff cotton socks into rolled balls and carefully folding T-shirts and jeans as if I was a sales assistant at a shop. If Hwee Mei had started cooking dinner by then, I hung around to help and chat to her. Like Pandora before me, I tried to make myself necessary, to worm my way into Sonny’s and Hwee Mei’s affection—or tolerance, at least—through my assiduous attention to their needs. I made myself their servant but I would rather have been their slave, for then I’d never have to leave that cramped and dreary flat to return to my parents’ house.

  ‘Don’t you have anything else you’d rather do, Grace?’ Hwee Mei sometimes asked me. ‘You’re just sixteen. Haven’t you got other friends from school you’d rather spend time with?’

  ‘Sure, I’ve got lots of friends,’ I said, trying for convincing nonchalance. ‘But I’d rather hang out with you guys.’

  Sometimes, when they were both in a good mood, they let me tag along with them to the pub. I’d sit at a corner table and keep Hwee Mei company while Sonny played. Brightly, chattily, I asked her questions about herself and pretended to have a deep interest in the database and spreadsheet programs she was currently learning. When I got home that night, I would write down everything she said and memorise the details of her life and her interests so that I wouldn’t forget. I found out which were her favourite movies and I hired the videos so that I could discuss them with her. She was a sucker for Hong Kong soaps and Hollywood teen movies starring Molly Ringwald as the class reject who got the vapid, clean-cut American preppie guy at the end even though she wasn’t the wealthy, beautiful prom queen bitch.

  ‘You like Pretty in Pink too? Hey, I love that movie!’ I exclaimed overenthusiastically, having fast-forwarded my way to the end. Surely she had to see how much we had in common, how we should be best friends.

  But there were some nights when she and Sonny didn’t want me around. They packed me off with the excuse that I should be doing my homework or spending more time with people my own age. On those nights, I hung around outside the flat and waited to see whether they would go out. If they did, I trailed after them, just as Winston had followed Donald Duck so many years ago, and crept into the cinema so that I could see the same film and pretend to myself that I was really with them. If they caught a bus and I lost them, I went to the pub, nodded to the bartender who knew I was Sonny’s sister and wriggled into my usual corner. I felt comforted by the familiar raucous din of conversation and the stale smell of beer.

  ‘Where have you been?’ the Patriarch barked out each night when I came into the house.

  ‘At Mitchell Library. Studying.’

  ‘Why can’t you study here? All of you run wild nowadays.’ But he left me alone after that. As long as I brought home decent grades, he didn’t much care what I was doing. ‘Have you had dinner? Nah.’ He shoved some money at me and told me to buy dinner for myself next time I was working late at the library. He always made sure I never went hungry.

  Mum would sometimes warm dinner for me in the microwave. She set it down on the kitchen table and drew up a chair, as if she wanted to talk. But she only ever wanted to know about Sonny. Had I seen Sonny, how was he, was he eating properly, did Hwee Mei know how to take care of him and keep their flat tidy, was everything all right with his job, when was he going to come home to visit her? She was starving for the intimate details of his everyday life.

  Whenever Mum phoned Sonny, Hwee Mei was the one who picked up the phone. Sonny was never available. He was always sleeping, in the shower, at band practice or at work. On the few occasions he answered the phone, he just emitted a few surly grunts at her until, buffeted by his silence, she was forced to hang up. He was angry with her and she didn’t know why. Perhaps he felt that she should have protected us from the Patriarch; perhaps he despised her for not having the courage to leave. She didn’t dare to ask him what she’d done wrong. Instead, she accepted his guilty verdict and drifted around the house in an impenetrable bubble of hurt and loneliness, hardly ever seeing me or hearing my voice.

  She could not forgive the Patriarch for throwing Sonny out of the house. She could not accept that Sonny no longer needed or wanted contact with her, that Hwee Mei was now the most important woman in his life. Where was her Sonny who had once hugged her and whispered to her, ‘Never mind. It’s all right. I’ll kill that bastard for you’? She wanted to punish the Patriarch. She left the laundry until late at night, just before he was ready for bed.

  ‘Come upstairs now,’ the Patriarch said. He started to switch off the lights.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ she said, turning them back on. ‘You know I can’t see.’

  By this time she had developed night blindness, just like Lida Lim. Each afternoon, as dusk fell, the house blazed with lights for she was afraid of being in the dark. She stumbled into furniture, kicked unknown objects and once broke her toe.

  ‘I have to finish this load of laundry and hang out the clothes to dry,’ she said. ‘You go ahead first. I haven’t even had my shower yet.’

  ‘What kind of a wife are you? If you didn’t spend so much time gallivanting all over the place with your church friends you’d have more time to clean the house properly and see to your family’s needs,’ he said. He meant his own sexual needs, of course. In the end, he waited up fo
r her and forced her to have sex with him.

  ‘I’m tired,’ she said, hunching her shoulder defensively against him.

  ‘Come on, Pan. It’s been weeks. You’re always tired.’ ‘I can’t help it if there’s so much work around the house.’ ‘If you can’t handle the housework as well as church, then I’ll ban you from going to all your church activities,’ he threatened.

  ‘Oh, all right, lah. Go ahead then,’ she said resentfully as he pulled at her pyjamas and pawed at her flesh. He was angry to find her dry.

  ‘I have a right,’ he insisted with the vehemence of the guilty. ‘Ephesians 5:22. “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church.”’

  She closed her eyes and thought of the story she’d heard about her own mother straining away from the shopkeeper, leaping off the bed, crawling into the corner, darting around the room like an animal in a trap. She resented her husband’s familiarity with her body; the way he knew how to arouse her. She was determined not to be aroused. She wanted the punishment of pain for them both. She shut her eyes tightly and began to chant out loud. ‘Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven . . .’

  ‘Stop it.’ Jonah grasped her arms and shook her as he heaved and panted uncontrollably above her. ‘Stop saying that.’

  ‘Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us . . .’

  ‘Damn you.’ Infuriated, he slapped her. He hated her at that moment, and hated himself for wanting her, but he couldn’t stop himself from pummelling her with his need. He cursed her with each vicious, breathless thrust. ‘Aahh! Damn you, damn you, damn you!’