The Healing Party

by Micheline Lee

  A distant flash of lightning showed on the horizon, and the air was hot and damp and scented with frangipanis. For a while we caught up on each other’s personal news. I hoped Jason would come up in the conversation, but no one mentioned him, even though he had been a regular here. As with so many of our dinner parties, the conversation soon turned to social justice issues. Ian had been scratching his shirtless chest and rocking on the back legs of his chair, unstimulated by the catching up. With the change in topic, he sat forward.

  Pip was writing an article about reforming laws that discriminated against same-sex couples. A discussion ensued that had the whole table going. They were so clever, fluent and strategic in the comments they made, while I went mute.

  After a few wines and a joint, everything seemed to glow. Although the air was thick with loud talk and the stereo blasting, I had the feeling I could hear myself breathe. This is my home and these are my people, I thought. I poured myself another glass of wine.

  Now Ian and Pedro talked about the Free Papua march they were organising. Pedro, a socialist from Sydney, had come to Darwin in solidarity for the movement. Pedro and his girlfriend Jasmine were staying with us and had set up their swag under the house. My concentration kept lapsing. I heard something about ‘Australia’s mining deals with Indonesia’ and the ‘torture of freedom fighters’.

  I was drunk enough not to care if I appeared stupid. ‘Are you saying Australia is involved in the torture?’ I asked

  Pedro stopped his rapid flow to stare at me. ‘Australian Federal Police have been training the Indonesian forces that are torturing and killing the freedom fighters,’ he said. ‘You don’t know about this? It’s been in the news for the last month!’

  Shelley filled my glass. ‘Natasha wouldn’t have had time to follow the news while she was looking after her mum,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve been in another world,’ I said. ‘Charismatics aren’t interested in human rights or the environment. They’re only interested in our souls.’ The joint came around again.

  ‘They’re obsessed with sex, you mean,’ said Pip’s girlfriend, Ruby, standing up. ‘My brethren, God made Adam and Eve. Not Adam and Steve!’ she intoned in the style of an American evangelist.

  ‘Natasha’s family aren’t like that,’ said Pip, stroking Ruby’s arm.

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ I said. ‘But don’t worry – they don’t hate you. They love you. They just hate your sin.’ That got a laugh from the table.

  ‘Someone should assassinate all the fundamentalist leaders. They’re dangerous people,’ said Pedro.

  ‘Whoa, settle down, Pedro,’ said Ian.

  I had drunk too much. ‘Yes, dangerous people,’ I kept saying. Letting the talk flow around me, I filled my glass and drank some more. I couldn’t stop giggling.

  I heard myself say, ‘Did you know that my mother is going to get up and walk?’ I was gabbling on now, not knowing what I was talking about. Somewhere in my ramblings, I was conscious of telling them about Mum’s dream of jumping the three-metre-high back fence, and the ramp to salvation, and the ridiculous healing party and the look in Mum’s eyes when she opened them after the marathon of prayers and knew she wasn’t healed.

  The room was spinning, I was zoning in and out. Someone was laughing too loudly. I realised it was me. The faces around the table were alarmed. Are you okay? Shelley’s and Pip’s faces were right in front of mine, they were holding me under my arms and pulling me to my feet.

  *

  Waves of shame rolled over me, waking me in the dark before I was aware of the drilling in my head and my dry, filthy-tasting mouth. I put my hand up to wipe my brow and knocked something hard next to my pillow. Someone had put a bottle of water there. I gulped it down.

  How vile I was, putting down my family in front of others. At least Dad knew how to inspire Mum, my sisters and his admirers; I knew nothing except how to judge and destroy. Admit it, I said to myself, you couldn’t help your mother. You weren’t there digging things up for her, or for Bonnie, or for the sake of the truth. You were doing it for yourself. You wanted some bloodletting. You’re nothing but a nasty piece of work.

  I was heavy, pinned to the bed, burning up. Every creak and clang of the fan spinning above me hurt my head. The light from the half-moon outside was too much. Now Jason and your friends know what you’re like, too. They are good, balanced people, and they know that you’re not.

  *

  I woke with the sun blazing into my room, head hammering and my body slicked in sweat. Panicking, I grabbed my watch. Thank God there was still time to call.

  After a shower and Panadol, I rang Mum’s ward number. It would be 9 a.m. over there and the best time to speak to her before the visitors arrived. The smell of the miso Shelley was cooking for breakfast wafted through the house, making me feel sick.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ I said.

  ‘Natasha,’ Mum said. ‘No need to ring again, la. You already rang last night.’

  ‘That was just to let you know I arrived. Remember I told you I would ring you every morning after breakfast?’

  ‘Are you sure? You are busy.’

  ‘I’m not too busy to give you a call.’

  ‘Don’t worry. The Lord is looking after me.’

  ‘I just want to say hello every day.’ I hoped she didn’t hear the catch in my voice.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. I heard other voices in the background. Mum spoke to someone.

  A sharp pain drilled into my head. ‘Do you see Doctor Richards today?’ I said.

  ‘Supposed to,’ she said.

  ‘He’ll let you know when you can go home?’

  ‘Yes, supposed to.’ She sounded distracted.

  ‘I’m going to work today.’

  ‘Tell your boss to give you back the same job,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t do that. I left that position.’

  Mum was speaking to someone on the other side. Her voice came on again. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I have to take whatever is available because I quit my old job.’

  ‘Okay, I will pray for you. Bye-bye.’

  ‘Bye, Mum. I’ll ring again tomorrow morning.’

  I went into the kitchen. Shelley was rushing around in her work clothes. ‘There’s coffee in the pot. I have to leave in two minutes,’ she said, smiling at me. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Pathetic. Did you put the bottle of water and the bucket next to my bed?’

  ‘Pip and I did.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m sorry I was so gross last night.’

  She waved a hand across her face. ‘Don’t even think about it. We’ve all been there,’ she said.

  No, they haven’t, I thought. They became even more suave and charming when they drank or smoked too much. I had never seen them be repulsive.

  *

  The receptionist at the Disability Advocacy Service was new. I told her I had an appointment with Katrina. She didn’t seem to recognise my name even though I had worked there for two years and only been gone for three months.

  ‘Take a seat,’ she said. ‘The director shouldn’t be too long.’ I sat down, feeling like an outsider. I looked at the posters on the wall: ‘Domestic violence, break the silence’, and another one, ‘Kava, not Aboriginal way’. Two clients walked in, fidgeting and tense in their sweaty T-shirts.

  Three of my old workmates spotted me at reception and came out of their offices to say hello. Their concerned looks made me aware that my eyes were probably still bloodshot and I looked terrible. Welcome back, how’s your mother, it’s been full-on here, Sam left to work for the Aboriginal Health Service, let’s do lunch … They had a busy air while we chatted, and quickly returned to their work. Despite their friendliness, I wondered if I sensed a wariness in them, as though Katrina had told them I wasn’t a team player.

  Katrina and I had worked on a project together before I left. We had found the ideal house to set up a group home for people with mental illnesses who were reintegrating into so
ciety after hospitalisation. Katrina instigated a doorknocking and consultation campaign to gain the support of neighbours for the home. Even though she had around eight years in the sector and I had only two, I was convinced that Katrina’s approach was wrong. ‘These people have the right to live in the community,’ I said. ‘Your consultation strategy will just give a voice to prejudice, and prejudice is not a valid reason for a proposal to be knocked back.’ Half our management committee supported me, but in the end the chair decided in favour of Katrina’s approach. We went ahead and the objections to having people with mental illness as neighbours were so vociferous and well publicised that the application for the house had to be withdrawn. I was furious, but she was adamant she had done the right thing. If we hadn’t gone down that path, she said, things would have been worse in the long run.

  Katrina called me into her office. Once we would have hugged, but now she just enquired politely after my mother before getting down to business.

  ‘As you know, the first group house was abandoned,’ she said. ‘But we’ve found another house and are going to have a consultation campaign similar to last time. You wouldn’t be a project manager this time, but we can give you a job doing the doorknocking and consultations. It’s a lower level than you were on.’

  She looked at me searchingly. ‘Obviously you need to be onside with it. I’m not offering you this job to bring up old issues. That’s water under the bridge. But if you are going to take this job’ – her eyes became flinty and her voice flared – ‘you need to be fully committed. You need to be a team player. I won’t have you running your own show.’

  I didn’t say anything for a while.

  ‘I will understand if you don’t want to take it on,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ I said.

  *

  In the next week, I doorknocked about forty households. The proposed group home was on a respectable middle-class street, with many households of young families with new four-wheel drives in their garages.

  I wore my badge and gave them my spiel. Four men and women at a time will live in the house with a supervisor until they are ready to shift into their own homes. They need to live in a neighbourhood setting to help them regain family, work and social networks before they move out on their own again.

  The neighbours were keen to have their say. The home shouldn’t be located in a residential area, they said. It will pose a danger to families and children. Our children will not be able to play in the street. The sense of community will be destroyed. Our properties will be devalued. These were the usual responses. Only five households in the street supported or were neutral about the home. I found I couldn’t pick who was going to be in favour. I would go into a house with people who seemed open, kind and intelligent, who had Aboriginal paintings on the wall and community-service jobs, and they would give the stock negative responses.

  For the first couple of days, I corrected residents who used the words ‘schizos’ or ‘psychos’, and responded with an appalled silence to those who told me that people with mental illnesses were dangerous, or sex offenders. To the neighbours I felt could be reasoned with, I talked about de-institutionalisation, the right to housing and a community, and told them to put themselves in the shoes of that person or their family. The drive in me to scourge and to scold and be the truth-sayer was strong. But when I spoke like this, I could see faces harden and the walls go up further. One young mother said, ‘Don’t look down your nose at me,’ and I felt ashamed at how self-righteous I was. I’m like my father, I thought, only without the charm and the charisma.

  *

  By now I’d seen Jason three times. The first time I had glimpsed him in the distance, cycling with a woman in an aerobics outfit. I expected the stomach-churning insecurity to start, but it didn’t.

  The second time was at the opening of his exhibition. It was a group show titled Strange Fruit. For years, Jason had made drawings of weird and macabre deep-sea creatures. Grabbing any blue biro close to hand, he would scratch vigorously onto paper until the marks became a powerful mass. The scribbles were an antidote, he said, to the constraints of his work as a graphic designer. Seeing them on the wall, I could see they were much more than that. His creatures exuded a deep aloneness and an alien quality.

  I wanted to tell him that, but he was surrounded by people. He was fit, fair and clean-cut, dressed neatly, without any hint of the bohemian artist. His glazed eyes and deadpan look might have led others to assume he was bored, but I knew that was the mask he wore at social occasions he found terrifying, and that he probably would have been vomiting before the show. I had to smile to see him trapped there, hating being the focus of attention. Our eyes met across the room. I waved and started to leave. But when I got to the door, I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Hi, thanks for coming,’ he said.

  My stomach flipped. ‘Of course, I had to.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘They’re everything I imagined you would do and more. They’re totally otherworldly.’

  ‘I’m really glad you came,’ he said. There was no mask now. His eyes were tender and troubled. ‘How’s your mum?’

  ‘She seems okay. She’s still in hospital, but should be out soon.’

  He nodded, and looked as if he wanted to say something else.

  I felt like hugging him. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’d better get back,’ he said.

  The third time I saw him, all my housemates were at a party and I was at home by myself. Candles, stuck in old beer bottles, were the only light on the verandah. The mosquitoes were bad that night. I had lit half a dozen mozzie coils and retreated to the dark back corner, where there was a mattress and net. I must have dozed off. Then Jason was on the verandah. I got to my feet, startling him, and softly said his name.

  ‘Shelley said you haven’t been well,’ he said. He was looking over to my corner, his face troubled. I realised he couldn’t see me. I was happy to stay there in the shadows. Grabbing a candle from the table, he walked over and held it out. Now his face was hidden and all I could see was a dark, hulking figure before me. For a long time, it seemed, he looked me over. He stood so close that I could hear him breathe and feel an intensity coming off him. If I took one step forward, we would be touching. I yearned to do that.

  We heard voices and footsteps coming up the verandah stairs. He put the candle down and walked away, passing Pip and Ruby on the steps.

  *

  I waited for the nurse to hand the phone to Mum. I had rung her every morning for a week, but she felt more distant than ever. When I asked when she was going home, she replied, ‘Maybe soon.’ To find out what was going on, I spoke to my sisters. Patsy said that Mum was on antibiotics as a precaution against infection, and that she would stay in hospital for two more weeks, until the course was completed.

  In the time before Mum’s cancer, I had rung her once a fortnight from Darwin. Our chats floated on the surface. We always talked about the same things: what we’d been eating, news about the Charismatic community, church, and so forth. I didn’t go into detail about anything, not because I didn’t want to, but because her mind would wander, and I’d realise after a while that she wasn’t listening. It was different, though, if I said I was ill or tired. Then she would scold, ‘Aiya! See, I told you – you work too hard, you need to rest more, don’t worry about things so much, pray to Jesus. You eat too many heaty foods. What time did you go to sleep last night? What? Too late – no wonder you get sick, going to sleep so late. Tell your boss not to give you so much work. Don’t be frightened to tell him. Go to church.’ The tirade would go on and on. When she scolded, she was animated and present, and it made me feel cared for.

  Now the nurse put Mum on. I didn’t ask her how she was feeling about the antibiotics, as I knew she wouldn’t want to talk about it. As usual, I asked who had stayed the night, how many people were at prayers, what she had eaten for dinner last night and breakfast this morning, how Dad’s proj
ects were going, and who was visiting today.

  I felt like telling her, I haven’t been sleeping since I returned to Darwin. I feel so depressed all the time. I don’t know what’s happening anymore. I want to bring you cheer, but I can’t.

  ‘I haven’t been feeling well,’ I said.

  I waited, but the scolding didn’t come. ‘Never mind,’ she said in a faraway voice. ‘Give it to Jesus.’ She was interrupted by someone. ‘What were you saying?’ she said, when she came back to the phone.

  ‘Never mind, Mum. I’ll ring again tomorrow. I’d better leave for work,’ I said.

  *

  Ten days after returning to Darwin, I received the phone call. It came in the small hours of the morning, when the bats cried like babies and the sun had not started its ascent, or the birds commenced their calls.

  Maria’s voice was low and stern when I picked up the phone. ‘Natasha, say goodbye to Mum,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  I heard voices in the background, then thuds and crackling as if the phone had been dropped. I started to sob.

  ‘I’m putting the phone next to Mum’s ear. She can’t talk. You can say goodbye now.’

  ‘Mum, I love you. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ I cried.

  ‘Are you okay, Natasha?’ It was Maria again.

  ‘Yes,’ was all I could say.

  ‘I have to hang up now,’ she said. ‘You can pray with us from over there.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The phone clicked.

  SPRING HAD COME TO MELBOURNE IN THE TWO weeks that I’d been gone. Outside, the wind blew warm and unsettling. Particles of dust, yellow pollen and dried-up blossoms swirled past my window.