They looked the part, I had to admit: old male artist wearing a black beret and paint-streaked shirt with nubile woman, poring over artworks on a worktable strewn with brushes, photochemical trays and rollers in a high-ceilinged studio decked with large dramatic works. The scene brought to mind other young women I had seen in the studio being regaled with stories by my father. They were models, my sisters’ friends, my friends, the eager-eyed girls from the Charismatic groups, and, of course, Bonnie.
‘Oh, Natasha!’ he called out when he saw me. ‘Meet Caroline! Caroline, this is my daughter, just down from Darwin where she is a crusader for the disadvantaged and the sick. And Caroline is a most wonderful artist.’ His face and voice were animated and warm.
‘No, I’m not, Paul,’ she protested, laughing.
‘But you are,’ he insisted. ‘It is self-evident from the inspired comments you have made about my artworks. I must say you have an eye and an aesthetic that I find truly —’
‘My mother was calling you,’ I said, glaring at her.
Caroline stopped smiling. ‘I didn’t think she’d need me while she was having a shower. I’ve only been up here a few minutes!’
‘Never mind, Caroline,’ Dad said. ‘Time spent on art is never wasted. I’m sure Irene doesn’t mind —’
I continued, louder. ‘Next time, wash the dishes while she’s in the shower. From the kitchen you can hear her call. Now you need to come downstairs and help her out of the shower.’
‘Uh-huh,’ she said.
Suddenly embarrassed by my bad temper and the baggy tracksuit I had slept in, I led her back downstairs in silence.
The bathroom mist had cleared and the shower curtain had been pulled back. Wrapped in a towel, Mum perched on the shower seat. Her jaw was tight and the skin on her arms and legs was tinged grey and pimply with cold.
‘Where were you?’ she said to Caroline.
‘Sorry, Mrs Chan,’ Caroline said, ‘I didn’t realise you needed me. Your husband was showing me his art.’
Dad had followed us down and stood outside the bathroom, peering in. ‘Everything okay, Irene?’
‘Cho meeyah? ’ Mum asked him.
‘I came to help,’ he answered.
‘We’re fine,’ I said, shutting the door on him.
‘I’ll lift you on the count of three,’ Caroline said. ‘One, two, three!’ She curved her long, supple back, flexed her shapely arms and legs, and in a fluid motion, hoisted Mum off her feet. Mum flopped against her like a dead weight.
After she left, I heard Mum and Dad arguing in the bedroom.
‘Why talk to her? She is here to work, not look at your art!’ Mum said.
‘We are Christians, Irene! We have to be generous with everyone.’
‘Then how come you never show your photos to Rosa? How come only this girl?’ she cried in a shrill voice.
‘Why do you have to be so suspicious, Irene? She was nervous because it was her first time here. We must show her some Christian kindness. Reject such bad thoughts, Irene, so Jesus can heal you.’ He walked out of the bedroom with an injured look on his face.
I went in to Mum and wheeled her in front of the dressing table so that she could do her hair and face. ‘We don’t need a replacement for Rosa. I can do the mornings,’ I said. ‘Shall I ring the agency to cancel her?’ She nodded. Waiting on the phone, I watched her stare at herself in the mirror. Her troubled eyes scanned up and down, and from side to side. With jerky hands she pulled at her hair, then took the brakes off the wheelchair and turned herself to the window.
As a girl, I had often watched Mum checking her appearance. She did this with scrupulousness and regularity, as though it were her job. The mirror on the dressing table and the one inside the wardrobe door were used for long, careful scrutiny. The hallway mirror was for last-chance checks before stepping out the door, and compact mirrors that popped out of her handbag, car mirrors and reflecting shop windows were also frequently consulted.
One day, when I was about fifteen years old, she held me by the shoulders and forced me to face the full-length wardrobe mirror. ‘Just look at yourself and enjoy it,’ she ordered. My reflection scowled back as I pulled away from her. Mum remained in front of the mirror. ‘When I was your age,’ she said, ‘I always peek at myself and say, “Hey, who is that pretty girl in the mirror? Is it really me?”’ With one hand on her hip, she spun from side to side, swishing her skirt around her legs.
A woman from the agency came on the line. After some discussion, she agreed to cancel services and we ended the call. I walked towards the sombre woman staring out of the window. Taking her wheelchair handles and turning her to face the dressing table, I said, ‘Look at yourself, Mum – you still look so young!’ I was searching for something comforting to say, too embarrassed to say what I was thinking – that she really was beautiful, even more beautiful, in a way, than she had been as a young woman. Her cheekbones were high and thin, like a bird’s wings, and her eyes were dark and dramatic in her face.
‘I am sixty-two years old, my dear. I am a grandmother!’ she said. ‘Who cares how I look! Don’t think of me, think of yourself!’ Her face brightened. ‘We must always try to look our best, but so what? Only God matters.’ She raised an open hand to the ceiling and flashed a smile. ‘Alleluia. Jesus is Lord!’
Standing behind her I saw my own face look back from the mirror – serious, round and taut, unsubtle in its even proportions.
*
I took my dishwashing gloves off and opened the front door. Patsy’s stick of a body was bowed over to one side, dragged down by her guitar in its angular hardcase. I pulled the guitar off her as she came in the doorway and scolded her, as Mum would have done, for carrying something so heavy. She had come straight from the conservatorium where she studied music, and wore a blue corduroy pinafore over leggings.
‘You look like a schoolgirl,’ I said. She raised her eyebrows and walked away to see Mum in the kitchen.
Doing housework always put me in an irritable state. For the past two hours I had stomped from room to room with my bucket of sponges, scrubbing brushes and detergents. Who could have left that piece of biscuit to be crushed into the carpet? Are they blind to the mould growing on the kitchen bin lid? How many weeks of scum have been allowed to build up under the taps? It’s disgusting that anyone could leave their shit stains on the toilet for others to clean! I recognised this irritation at housework as a trait of Mum’s. I had an image of her squatting on the floor, flushed and scowling, muttering about the filth as she scrubbed at the carpet. But that was when Mum worked on her feet from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. every weekday at the Arnott’s biscuit factory, and I had no excuse for not helping.
My final task was to wipe down the tables in the lounge room. Mum’s medicines, cups and cloths had piled up, leaving rings and stains on the coffee table by the couch where she lay during the day. I cleared and cleaned the table so that it looked barely used. Then I removed Mum’s pillow and blanket from the couch and straightened the cushions. All was looking fresh and gleaming, ready for the ladies’ cell group.
For a few years after becoming Charismatic, Mum and Dad had led the St Joseph’s Catholic Charismatic prayer meeting. Perhaps Mum was too reserved and Dad too unorthodox, or perhaps some felt uncomfortable that the majority of the group were Chinese, but it never took off like the other Charismatic prayer groups. Mum would count the number each time – for us, twenty-five was a good turnout, whereas the other Catholic groups like Oakleigh had 150. Dad, Mum and Maria would go to great lengths to lift the numbers, preaching to any person they met, ringing them to remind them to come, offering to pick them up. There was a creep who lived in St Kilda whom my parents saw as their project. They would drive forty minutes out of their way to pick him up from his hostel. Once, sitting in the back next to me, he put his hand up my dress. I was too ashamed to do or say anything.
At these meetings, Maria, Patsy and I quickly learnt the easy guitar chords and beat of the hymns and became
the ‘music ministry’. Patsy, we discovered, had the gift of an unusual voice, and she threw herself into the music ministry role.
Today’s cell group was an offshoot of the old prayer group. It met for morning tea once a week at the parish house, but since Mum’s cancer the ten or so ladies, including Patsy, had been meeting at my parents’ house instead.
In the kitchen, Patsy and I laid out the cups, saucers and cakes on a trolley that we kept under the stairs for entertaining. We were to wheel it out when the ladies arrived. Mum sat at the kitchen table, watching us and smiling. ‘Everything is just right! Sit down and rest now. Why don’t you two start on the cakes?’ she said. ‘Come on, take your pick. They all look so nice.’ She was looking at Patsy.
I picked up a sticky pink-and-yellow vanilla slice and took a big bite. Custard squirted out on both sides. ‘Yum,’ I said.
Patsy, not moving, stared at the cakes. She got up. ‘Anyone want a glass of water?’
‘Sit down and take a cake!’ Mum ordered.
Patsy selected the smallest – a mini fairy cake in a paper patty. She played with the paper, picked up a crumb with one finger and put it into her mouth.
‘Put it all in your mouth,’ Mum said. ‘Eat it and enjoy it, like Natasha.’
‘I’m sorry, Mum, I just don’t feel like cake. I’ll have an apple,’ she said.
‘Apples, apples, that’s all you eat. Did you have breakfast this morning? You didn’t, did you! You want to go to hospital?’
‘I’m fine, Mum.’ Patsy put the fairy cake back and pushed the trolley into the lounge room.
I picked up the plates and followed her. Out of earshot of Mum, I said, ‘Go back and have a bit of cake. Can’t you at least pretend for Mum?’
‘Like you?’ Patsy said.
We arranged the trolley and plates and returned to the kitchen. Patsy pulled up a chair next to Mum. ‘Do we have time to say a prayer before the ladies come?’ she said.
‘Yes, let’s pray. Natasha, you too,’ Mum said.
I told Mum I had to get ready to go out shopping with Dad. As I left the kitchen, Patsy opened a bible and started to read a verse from Mark: ‘“And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues. They will …”’
Some minutes later, I was drawn back to the kitchen by the sound of Patsy singing in tongues. She stood behind Mum with her hands laid upon her head. Both faces, so enraptured that I could not say which was young or old or beautiful, tilted upwards as though bathing in life-giving sun. ‘Ushti, kasha, unak-unay-unay asti, shaya,’ Patsy sang in a minor key. I shivered at her voice, which was soft yet piercing, angelic yet eerie.
*
Dad was still driving the yellow Holden station wagon he had bought thirteen years earlier, soon after we arrived in Australia. The four of us sisters would sit shoulder to shoulder in the back, and since there were only three seatbelts, none of us wore them. The paint was faded and rusting in places, but it was in good shape for its age. He had it serviced on time and treated it well – not out of any interest in cars, but out of fear, since he had no mechanical knowledge. Only he drove the car. He had discouraged Mum from getting her licence, and my sisters and I, who did get ours, had not been allowed to drive it. The bottom of the rear window was lined with three stickers. One said God is Life above a picture of a foetus in a womb. The middle sticker said Pray the Rosary, and the one on the other side, Honk if you love Jesus. Dad had also painted a fish symbol in red on the bonnet and the boot of the car. The same symbol appeared on some of Dad’s clothes, hand-painted on his shoes, hats, lapels and breast pockets.
I got into the back seat and waited. Even if the front passenger seat was vacant, my sisters and I, with the exception of Anita, always sat in the back. I wondered if I should move to the front, but just the thought of sitting next to him made me uncomfortable.
Dad came out of the house and got into the driver’s seat. ‘Natasha, mass first before the shopping. Right?’ he said, starting the car. I didn’t answer.
In the church, the air was even more frigid than the thirteen-degree chill outside. Father Robertson’s dull words were absorbed into the high ceilings and cold bricks of the large, almost empty building. Only a few attended mass at St Joseph’s on a weekday, and Dad appeared to be the most devoted of them all. Removing the cushion from the kneeling bench, he knelt down directly on the hard wood. When others sat back down, only he remained on his knees with eyes pressed shut, hands clasped, and mouth moving soundlessly.
Seeing him pray with such fervency, pity rose in me. I thought about his brother in the cage and the stories Dad had told me about his family. You had to be a survivalist, he said. At any moment of the day or night, a fight could break out. It might be his brothers bashing each other, or they could be meting out punishment to his sisters for not ironing their shirts right, or for any imagined slight. His brothers would punch or kick or cane his sisters, leaving them bloodied and bruised. And the worst of it was that their mother encouraged them. Only Dad tried to stop them, but he was the intellectual and not big or strong enough.
Once, Dad had shown me his knees – knobbly, he said, from hours of kneeling when he’d converted to Catholicism at the age of nineteen. Seven years later, he lost his belief. The period in the wilderness lasted twenty-six years, until we came to Australia and he found Jesus again. Dad became a born-again Catholic Charismatic and the family was expected to follow suit. All of us except Anita, who had already moved out, were obliged to go to mass every day. He also made it compulsory to go to three or four Charismatic meetings each week. I would often think that if I were allowed to choose between the two, I would choose this sterile church service any day over the loud crashing emotions of the meetings.
We were in the second pew, in front of the altar and raised sanctuary where Father Robertson and the altar boy were seated. Recognising me next to Dad, Father Robertson nodded. The altar boy sat stone-like, except for the sneakered foot fidgeting below his gown. In the pew in front of us was a preschool girl next to a thin old lady. The little girl kept turning around, staring at Dad and me with her round blue eyes and giggling. She wore a woollen poncho with a full denim skirt and lacy knee-high socks.
Each time the girl tried to escape from the pew, her grandmother grabbed the back of her skirt and pulled her back. When it was time to kneel, however, the little girl broke free. She ran up the steps to the sanctuary and sat on the top step, looking pleased with herself, and ignoring her grandmother’s urgent entreaties that she come back now. Falling on her back, the girl lifted her legs up. Her skirt opened, showing pudgy white thighs and polka-dot knickers. While we said the Eucharist prayer, she lay on the floor in front of the altar, waving her legs in the air.
After mass, two lady parishioners came over to ask how Irene was. One of them, with sympathetic, watery eyes, patted Dad’s arm. I remembered them as everyday churchgoers, not Charismatics. Dad thanked them for their concern. He explained that Jesus had healed Irene, and invited them and their families to the healing party. The first lady blinked her watery eyes a few times and folded her arms. The other one took a step back, then both quickly excused themselves.
*
Missionaries for Christ Men’s House was a household of nine young, single Charismatic men who had taken a vow to spread the message of the Holy Spirit. Mum and Dad had the voluntary job of buying groceries for them and picking up donated items from businesses every fortnight. They had stopped this when Mum was diagnosed with cancer, but last week, after it was prophesied that Mum would be healed, Dad decided he would resume the work. Dropping me at the supermarket, he gave me 200 dollars to spend.
‘Mum told me not more than 150 dollars,’ I said, holding out a fifty.
‘Never mind. Spend it,’ Dad said, pushing the money back into my hand. ‘They do such good work for the Lord. Get them nice chocolate, ice cream, cashew nuts, treats! Spend it all on them.’
Dad liked to g
o out with a full wallet. It would bulge with two-dollar coins in readiness for any buskers, collectors or homeless people who crossed his path. Five, ten and fifty-dollar notes overflowed from it for donations to Christian causes. After mass, he had handed a fifty to Father Robertson. When we delivered the groceries to the Missionaries for Christ, Dad pressed another fifty into the hand of the leader of the household. As the day progressed and we performed our errands, Dad’s wallet steadily emptied.
It was not that my parents had a lot of spare cash. Except for the parties, they lived and brought up the family abstemiously on Dad’s photography jobs and, in the early years in Melbourne, Mum’s wage as a factory worker. Dad had left his job at the National Photo Gallery last year. Now they lived on the intermittent money he made from selling artworks. ‘Acting like a big shot!’ Mum would say of his donations. Anita, the only one of our family who understood money, lectured Dad on the dangers of having no savings at retirement. He always ignored these warnings, and this morning, as I watched him, it seemed he was giving out the money at an even faster rate. He told all the Charismatics we met along the way of the prophecy of Mum’s miracle. They thanked the Lord and praised my father for his faith, and promised to come to the healing party.
So far the errands had broken up our journey, but now we were heading home. That would mean an unbroken stretch of about forty minutes in the car with Dad. He started singing. It was the kind of singing he did for an audience, with trills, staccatos and gasps. I pretended to be asleep in the back seat, but this did not deter him.
He started to speak. ‘There seems to be a change in you, going to church and praying with the family. That makes us happy. I’m not going to question how deep it goes. For a start, you are doing it for your mother, which is an unselfish thing. But do not doubt the miracle. For if anyone doubts, there will be no miracle. Jesus will not force a miracle on anyone. It has to be courted. That sounds like a coy word, and it is, in a way. Jesus has so much respect for each one of us sinners that he would stand back though he hungers to shower us with his love. He is waiting to be invited.
The Healing Party Page 5