‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I can change it if you want. Next time the meditation can be on forgiveness.’ She looked at me, suspicious for a moment.
I turned her wheelchair and my chair so that we were facing each other. I reached forward to pick up her foot to massage it, but she said she would take her shoes off herself today. Her face was freshly made up, and she looked sweet in a purple floral skirt, matched with a pink cardigan and pink hair clips. Trousers were now too difficult to pull on, and tracksuit pants were upchup and sloppy, so Mum always wore loose dresses or skirts that Patsy had let out to fit over the lump on her stomach.
Mum lurched forward and took hold of one ankle with both hands. Jerking backwards, she hoisted her leg up. Sprawled against the back of the wheelchair, skirt fallen back, she lifted her foot towards her chest and yanked at her shoe. Her legs splayed, revealing pale knickers and bare thighs, still fleshy and not yet wasted.
I stood up to help her, at the same time averting my eyes – how coarse and clumsy she looked, but also sexy. An animality had appeared since her sickness that I had not noticed before. During all those years trussed in figure-hugging clothes, straight-backed and elegant, taking small steps and tugging her skirt down, she had been alluring but less alive than she was now. I wished Dad had caught a glimpse of what I had just seen in Mum. But perhaps he did see her like that behind closed doors. I hoped Mum had enjoyed sex, that somehow she was a different person in the dark, that she shed the constant self-discipline.
Dad had first noticed her, the prettiest and most elegant woman in Hong Kong, walking to and from church, surrounded by her suitors and friends. He had to work hard to attract her attention. He described her as ‘exclusive’.
Dad had told me that while his seven brothers shared one small room and his sisters slept on the floor in the kitchen, he as the favoured son was allowed to sleep in his parents’ bedroom until he was thirteen years old. A camp bed was kept at the foot of their four-poster bed for him. The first time Dad was woken up by their lovemaking, he called out, ‘Get out! Get out!’ He told me that in his half-sleep, he had thought someone was trying to saw a leg off the bed. ‘Go back to sleep,’ his father said. Dad imitated his father’s gruff voice.
I never heard or saw my parents having sex. In my later teens, I realised how they had adapted to the thin walls between our bedrooms. First there was a click as the latch on their door came down, and then the rickety ceiling fan would be switched on to high, and soon all that could be heard was its thud, whirr and clank.
Up until our early teens, Mum would sometimes check on us in our rooms after we had gone to sleep. So quiet was she that often I did not wake until I felt her tugging at the bedsheet that was pulled up over my head. She feared I would suffocate, even though I told her that I always arranged the sheet so that there was a breathing-gap above my nose. Before leaving, she would sprinkle holy water on me and around the room. As soon as she closed the door, I covered my head with the sheet again.
On the occasions when Dad walked in, it was to wake us up because he had to share something that could not wait. One night he woke us at 2 a.m. to tell us he had seen the face of Jesus. He flung our bedroom doors open and spoke, walking up and down the corridor that joined the rooms, so all could hear. His voice was rich and full of wonder. ‘It was not the gaunt face of Jesus at crucifixion as we see on the Turin Shroud,’ he said. ‘He appeared to me as he was in his element, preaching on the mount, walking on water, raising the dead! His face, how do I describe it? It was euphoric. Yes, boyish, brilliant and euphoric!’
Dad had woken us up before he became born again, too. Not long after we migrated to Australia, he got us out of bed to watch a late-night documentary on Hitler. ‘One must know what this life is, and the infinite cruelty of man,’ he said. I remembered how light my head felt, the same as when I was woken for Christmas midnight mass. I saw the image on the screen and thought how strange it looked and wondered why it was black and white when we had just bought a colour TV. A row of people were standing in front of a big pit. Maybe they were not human or they were in disguise, I thought, because their eyes were big and terrible, they had no clothes or hair, and they were as thin as skeletons. One by one, they fell into the pit after the pop from a soldier with a pointed gun. Mostly I remembered how Dad’s eyes were intense and compassionate. Brow raised and head shaking, he looked at us and said, ‘How could the world have let this happen?’ He seemed heroic to me.
In that house on the hill in Hong Kong, before we came to Australia, my parents would wake us when they came home from parties. Sometimes Dad’s voice was happy and excited, other times he and Mum were quarrelling. Anita had her own room, but Maria, Patsy and I shared a long room, like a dormitory. My bed was near the entrance, with Maria and Patsy at the other end, near the window. A few times after they quarrelled, Mum would enter our room and sit silently at the foot of my bed. Occasionally I heard a sigh. She seemed to stay there for a long while, a dark, still form.
I remembered one night when Dad came home raving and excited. He wasn’t drunk – he hardly drank. He didn’t need it, he said, he got drunk on life. The door was flung open and the light snapped on, hurting my eyes. His voice was sing-song and embracing: ‘Wake up, girls. Taste the best durian cake in the world, the best! I said to the host of the party, “This is the best cake in the world, my daughters won’t believe me,” and she said, “Take, you must take some home for your pretty daughters, la.”’ My eyes were still straining under the light. He put his hand under my head. ‘Come on, open your mouth.’ His thick fingers shoved a chunk of sweet and sticky mush into my mouth. He stood in the middle of our room to tell us about the party.
‘The most talented and handsome people in Hong Kong were there, and some Americans, you know how they speak, Hiyaaaah youuallll. This seven-foot-tall American in a gleaming white jacket is talking big in front of his sycophants. He pretends he knows all about modern art, and then I ask him in front of everyone, “So tell me, I’d be interested in your views on this, do you think the Dada movement can be said to be more of an art form or a philosophy?” “Uhh uhh uhhh” – this smart-alec man, as I guessed, had never even heard of the Dada movement. That silenced him. He should not be so vain!’
Maria, Patsy and I laughed, glad that Dad was happy and had shown up the American man.
‘All right, sleep now, sweet dreams.’ He switched off the light and was gone.
Suddenly the light came back on and it was Mum with a glass of water and a bowl in her hands. ‘Here, gargle and spit. Do you want ants to eat all the sugar in your mouth?’ This was the way Mum explained the effects of plaque. She went to Patsy first, making her sit up and sip the water. Patsy didn’t know how to gargle, so Mum told her to drink it and then take another sip until there was no cake left in her mouth.
She came over to me, but I wouldn’t sit up. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she said and pulled me up. ‘Here, drink this water,’ she said. I refused, and she forced the glass to my mouth, chinking the glass against my teeth. I spat the water out over the bed and started to cry, then to wail. I wouldn’t stop. Mum went to get Dad and I stopped as soon as I heard him coming.
*
Mum was ready to talk now. She had taken her shoe off and smoothed her skirt down. I lifted her foot onto my lap and started to massage upwards, the way the physio had shown us, to move her circulation back up to her heart. Her foot, once sinewy and lined with veins, was now swollen and cold.
Usually I had my questions prepared. At the last session I had asked her about the period in Hong Kong after she married Dad. This time I was not sure what to talk about. I thought about Agnes, the servant and friend whom Maria, Patsy and I had liked most.
She had been getting too old for the orphanage where she’d grown up, so Mum had agreed to take her on as a servant to look after us kids. I could remember the first evening Agnes came to our house. She was dark-skinned, with rough hair and strong, thin limbs. All evening she hung her head
low, answering yes or no when spoken to, but never looking up. It was only when Mum told her to help me make my bed and we were alone that she looked up and I saw she had pretty light-brown eyes, not dark-brown or black eyes like the rest of us.
‘I will be your friend if you will be mine,’ she said.
She was Anita’s age but she was our friend, playing with us, even fighting with us when Mum wasn’t looking.
But then one day I came home after school to a commotion at the foot of the stairs. Agnes was crouched over, clinging to the banister with both hands. Mum and Anita were wild and shouting, grabbing at her, tearing at her clothes, telling her to get out.
My next memory was of Agnes standing alone outside the driveway gate, crying. I asked her why she was crying. ‘I’m not crying,’ she said. ‘I’m just sweating.’
I put Mum’s foot down and picked up the other one. ‘Remember Agnes, our servant from the orphanage?’ I said. ‘Did you know that after you fired her, she would come and meet us after school and bring us biscuits? I still don’t know why you and Anita dragged her out of the house that time.’
‘Hmmmph. Why do you always want to talk about bad things? So long ago. How can you even remember these things?’ Mum said. ‘You need to forgive and forget. Like Tom Bronson said. It will make you sick if you don’t forgive.’
‘Have you forgiven?’ I asked.
Straightaway she said, ‘Yes, I have.’
‘Who did you have to forgive?’
‘I have forgiven the Lord for taking Vincent from us.’
‘What about Dad? Can you forgive him?’ I tried to control my voice.
Her expression turned into a sneer. ‘What for?’ she said.
I rubbed my face. What did I want from her?
‘It’s you who must forgive your dad,’ she said. ‘He is a good man. He was very modern, but he is changed since he was born again. Many men are bad – they are like that. It’s good he’s not like his terrible brothers. Anyway we have Jesus now. We are saved.’
She pulled her foot off my lap. ‘I’m tired,’ she said. She pressed the lump on her stomach and screwed up her face.
‘Sorry,’ I said, but I don’t think she heard.
‘Why did you have to leave home like that? You didn’t even finish school. Forgive!’ she said.
I thought about the time when I was about thirteen years old, when I was so angry that I sat on a chair in the lounge room and would not talk or move. I couldn’t remember now what had made me angry. Over three hours passed, and my sisters started to get scared. They pleaded with me, scolded me, poked, pushed and then hit me. Their blows hurt, but still I didn’t move. As soon as I heard my parents arrive home, I got up and acted normal again.
If Mum could forgive, why couldn’t I? Who was I to judge whether she had really forgiven him?
I could forgive. As Dad said, it was a decision, not an emotion. I could do it. I felt a weight lift off me.
THE LIGHT WAS ON AND THEY WERE BOTH IN THE room when I came to help Mum out of bed. It was Saturday morning, and the healing party was just two weeks away. She was sitting in her nightgown with the blanket pulled up to her chin. She smiled at me. Dad, freshly dressed and showered, was balanced on one side of the bed beside her. His eyes were serious and bright.
‘Now, describe the dream again,’ he said to Mum. ‘Natasha will join me in bearing witness to it. Start from the beginning.’
‘Okay … I was sleeping,’ she said slowly.
‘Where?’ said Dad.
‘In my bed here, la.’
‘Go on.’
‘Then a man was standing right there with a big torch.’ She pointed to where I stood at the foot of the bed. ‘He was shining the torch at me.’
‘How did he look?’ asked Dad. ‘Could you see his face?’
‘No, he was in the dark.’
‘That man, of course, is Jesus. Praise the Lord.’ Dad clapped his hands, breaking the quiet of the room. ‘Then what happened?’
‘Suddenly I could walk. Then I was running. I ran into the backyard and over the fence.’ She looked up to the ceiling, trying to remember more. ‘That’s all.’
‘Right. What do you mean you ran over the fence? Which fence?’ Dad said.
‘This fence here.’ She pointed to the window overlooking the backyard. I drew back the curtains. In the half-light of dawn, sky and fence formed two parallel strata. Beneath the layer of gleaming steel sky, the length of fence was black and impenetrable. ‘I jumped over it,’ she said.
‘You jumped over the back fence? To the alley on the other side?’ Dad asked.
‘Yes.’ Mum raised her shoulders, opened her eyes wide and gave a stricken, questioning smile.
‘The Lord has sent us confirmation that you will be healed.’ Dad clasped both of Mum’s hands in his.
She closed her eyes and nodded. ‘Isn’t that good, Natasha?’
‘Yes, that’s a great dream, Mum,’ I replied.
*
When I lifted Mum, it made a big difference if she could bear some of her own weight and move in sync with me. But this morning she was lost in her thoughts and it took twice as long to transfer her onto the shower bench. Emerging from the bathroom, I heard thuds coming from the backyard. I went to the window in Mum and Dad’s room, and saw Dad standing outside with a spade in his hand. Clad in a stained terry-towelling hat, old brown skivvy, gardening gloves and socks pulled over his trousers, he looked like the peasant labourers I had seen in Hong Kong.
He stood on the paved path that stopped halfway down the right-hand side of the backyard. At the end of this paving was the Hills Hoist and a shed – the only reasons we ever ventured out there. Dad walked to the edge of the pavers and gazed across the sea of weeds and long grass to the other side of the yard. Then he raised the spade, shouted out ‘horrr, worr, hiyah!’ and violently and repeatedly stabbed the ground in front of him. He then stepped off the pavers onto the ground he had attacked. He raised the spade again and repeated the whole process, making his way forward through the grass one step at a time.
I found Maria in the kitchen and asked her to listen out for Mum in the shower. Returning to Mum and Dad’s room, I opened the door to the backyard and stepped outside. Dad was halfway towards the opposite fence now. The air was cold and the smell of the crushed weeds was over-sweet. A thin trail of flattened grass led to him.
‘What are you doing?’ I yelled to his back.
He turned his head. ‘Natasha? Good, I need your help. Stay on the pavers. Don’t come here until I have frightened away the snakes.’
‘What snakes?’ I called back.
‘What did you say?’ he said, continuing his grunting and hiyah and stabbing.
‘Never mind.’ I went inside and brought out a load of washing to hang while I waited.
When he arrived at the opposite fence, he turned and shouted, ‘See, I have created a safe corridor.’ He gestured grandly at the cut through the grass. ‘Now you can walk across. When you walk, you must stomp hard to show the snakes you’re coming. Show them who’s boss. Come on!’ He stamped his feet, putting his whole body into it, as if dancing a jig.
I followed his trail. ‘Stomp!’ he yelled. I stamped my feet hard, making swarms of little insects rise. He grinned.
When I reached him, I asked again, ‘What are you doing?’
‘You will know soon enough,’ he chuckled. He picked through the old planks that leant against the fence, making a pile out of the useable pieces and throwing aside the rotten ones. Then he threw me a rag and I set about brushing the dirt off the planks he had selected.
‘Now we must carry these planks of wood two at a time over to the pavers. You take one end. I will take the front. Hoi!’ He lifted, hunching his shoulders with the load, waiting for me to pick up the tail end. ‘Follow me!’ he cried, and we lumbered and lifted and stamped back and forth in tandem until a dozen planks lay scattered on the pavers.
He placed the four longest planks side by side on the
ground so that they formed a long rectangle. The shorter pieces he laid crossways at regular intervals on top of the long planks. Stepping back, he surveyed his work. ‘You know, I have never done any carpentry before. But once you have an artist’s eye, you can visualise anything, unlock its internal structure. Like Leonardo da Vinci!’ He gave me a hammer and showed me where to drive nails into the cross pieces.
‘Are you making a table?’ I asked.
He chuckled.
‘What about a raft?’
‘Too many bible stories,’ he said, and we both laughed.
‘You know, you must make kung fu sounds when you exert yourself. It’s not just for show or to scare the opponent; it is to release the force in you – wor, hor, yu, hiyah!’ he shouted. ‘Now, watch me cut the wood. You do not push and pull the saw like an ox. It must be like Chinese brush painting. You get a feel of the medium, the poetry of it, you find the right angle and it’s like slicing through butter. You see, in everything I do, there is art.’ The saw in his hand screeched, caught and buckled on the wood. He stopped to catch his breath and again we laughed. ‘Of all my daughters, you alone have inherited an understanding of art from me.’ His eyes met mine and I knew he was flattering me. He was turning on the charm. Not for his audience or for the girls he wanted to admire him. For me. I turned my face away so he could not see my pleasure.
We had used up nearly all the wood and nails. The structure was around three metres long and a metre wide. ‘Now bring your mum to the window,’ Dad said. ‘Tell everyone to stop what they’re doing and come now! Then I will tell you all what I’m doing!’
I went inside and summoned them. Mum, showered and dressed, was taking her breakfast and medicine in the kitchen with Patsy. Charles had arrived with a second freezer to hold the food we were preparing for the party. He and Maria pushed and pulled it into the kitchen while Anita held Will out of the way. But now everyone stopped what they were doing and went to Mum and Dad’s room. I positioned Mum at the glass panel closest to the paved area. The rest of the family crowded around us.
The Healing Party Page 13