I sort of laughed it off before walking into the nursing home where I tried to pick an old lady who’d make a good mum. There were lots to choose from. I tried to look for the most deserving. When I saw all those old women looking at me longingly as if to say ‘Take me, take me’, it made me feel lousy.
Finally I picked a lady who was all curled up in a wheelchair. She had white hair that was long and pulled back into a small bun at the back of her head. She reminded me of a bird, tiny and defenceless. She needed a son to treat her right, and to protect her. I called her Mum right from the start. She gurgled when I told her that I was her son. She recognised me instantly. I could see it in her eyes. I told her that I’d be taking her out on Mother’s Day, back to my place, back to the caravan where I’d cook dinner for her.
One of the nurses came up to me. ‘You must be the first visitor Iris has had since she’s been here.’
‘Yeah? I would have come sooner but I’m from Queensland,’ I lied. ‘Only got here yesterday.’
The nurse gave me a funny look. As if I was a lying bastard. But I kept a level head, and smiled down at Mum.
The nurse kneeled down next to the old lady and yelled into her ear, ‘Iris has been with us for over five years now.’ She looked up at me. ‘It’s kind of you to visit her.’
Mum followed the nurse’s gaze, begging me with her watery eyes, to take her home, right there and then. I kneeled down in front of her and took hold of her thin bony hands. ‘I’ll be back to see you tomorrow.’
The nurse brought her hands together. ‘Oh, you’d love that, wouldn’t you, Iris?’
I gave Mum a small kiss on her cheek and left. But I felt bad for abandoning her, all alone, in a place where the smell of piss made you want to puke. What kind of son was I?
That night as I lay in bed, I began to make plans for Mother’s Day. I’d have to clean up the caravan. Go to Target and buy a decent dinner set. Buy a card and a present and flowers. Then I’d go to Woolies and buy a frozen dinner. But which one? I decided on shepherd’s pie. I’d had it before, it was pretty runny and I knew Mum would like it.
Black Jack noticed that I was different. ‘Hey Machine Man, you’re pretty quiet these days. What’s up?’
I shook my head, feeling the metal piercings in my face.
‘Notice you been going to that nursing home a lot lately.’ Black Jack sized me up. ‘Not doing anything stupid, are you?’ He stopped. ‘I find out that you’re fucking old ladies – I’ll kill you.’
‘I’m not fucking old ladies.’
‘What then? Is it community work or sumthing?’
‘Yeah, sort of.’
Black Jack didn’t laugh. He didn’t have a laugh for what he suspected me of.
‘I swear to God.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ll take a hammer to you if I find out you’re fiddling with any of those old ducks at that joint.’
‘I like talking to old people.’
Black Jack gave a shrieking laugh, short and razor sharp with disgust, slicing into me like I was a hunk of cheese. ‘Bugger me, as to what they make of you at that nursing home.’
I wanted to tell Black Jack that none of them ever said anything. Never called me names or stared at me like I was some kinda freak. But I kept quiet. Black Jack was onto me, and he’d be watching me closely. I didn’t fancy being whacked to death with a hammer.
I was lucky, with Mother’s Day being on a Sunday the yard would be empty, and locked up with me having the keys to the gate. Black Jack had keys too but he’d be tied up in a game of poker at some mate’s place.
I searched out a good hiding spot in the caravan to put all the stuff I bought for Mother’s Day. It was easy with the dinner set; I just replaced the old stuff with the new. And the perfume I’d bought Mum I hid in my pots and pans cupboard, way out the back behind the soup pot, same with the card. Hiding the frozen dinner was dead easy, just shoved it in the small fridge freezer.
I’d wrapped the presents but the card had me stumped. I couldn’t write, and I wanted to tell Mum something. I wondered if Nut would help me out.
‘I didn’t know you had a mum,’ said Nut, when I found him in the office and asked him if he’d write something in the card for me.
‘She lives in Melbourne,’ I lied.
‘What do you want me to write?’ he asked, sitting down at the desk and grabbing a pen.
‘Dunno.’
‘How about . . .’ Nut waved his head around as if he was sloshing words about, hoping the right ones would come out. ‘Happy Mother’s Day from Paul?’
‘Yeah, sure.’ I didn’t have the guts to ask that he write Love Paul.
Back in my caravan I stared at that card for ages, wondering if I could write the word Love myself. I got a pen. Held it. But I couldn’t write. So instead I drew a love heart and XXX next to it.
I was pretty excited when Mother’s Day arrived. By six I was out of bed, checking the yard, feeding and chaining the dogs up, before having a super long hot shower and shave and putting on the new clothes that I bought for the occasion. The shirt and trousers were creepy, they weren’t my usual black T-shirt and jeans, but for Mum’s sake I didn’t want to look too anti-establishment.
I set the table. Straightened up the caravan. I’d cleaned it big time the day before. I took another look at myself in the wardrobe mirror. I put gel in my hair and tried to flatten it a bit. I thought about taking out the bits of metal that pierced my nose, lips, eyelids, forehead, tongue and ears, but something stopped me. Mum loved me for who I was. I knew that. She’d never once complained about them.
Finally, I went out and bought Mum a bunch of flowers from a street vendor set up not far from the wrecker’s yard. I asked the vendor what kind of flowers they were; he told me they were chrysanthemums. When I brought them back to the caravan I realised I didn’t have a vase. No matter, I put them alongside her plate. I checked everything once more. I wanted the day to be perfect.
I was at the nursing home dot on ten. There were lots of other people this time, checking out the mothers they’d thrown away. Mum was in her usual spot, sitting in her wheelchair, she was all ready to go.
As I pushed Mum’s wheelchair out of the nursing home and onto the path I began to point out different things that I thought might interest her. She listened carefully as I told her about what a nice day it was and how blue the sky was. I pointed out the letterboxes, and how each one was different. She liked that. When we got to the yard I began to tell her about all the different cars, what kind of accidents they’d been in, and what parts they were being stripped for. I showed her where all the doors were kept; doors were our number one seller. She was rapt.
Getting Mum into the caravan was easy. I just picked her up out of the wheelchair and carried her in. She was as light as a feather. I tried to sit Mum at the kitchen table. She flopped around, but I quickly secured her by stuffing the pillow and blanket from my bed around her.
‘Mum, you all right?’
Mum stared at me. And in her eyes I saw a reflection – me. She was looking at me with love. I smiled at her and she made a small kind of happy gurgling sound.
‘Well, this is my home, this where I live, Mum. Do you like it?’
I could tell Mum liked it and that she was proud of me. I felt a warm inner glow. Suddenly I remembered the present and card. I dived down and grabbed them from the cupboard and put them in front of Mum. She gurgled. I was beginning to understand her gurgles. This gurgle was one of surprise. And how I shouldn’t be spending my hard-earned wages on buying presents and a card for her, instead I should be saving my money to buy my own home. I told her that it was the least I could do, after all she’d done for me. I pointed out the flowers to her and she gurgled that chrysanthemums were her favourite. I helped Mum open her present, she gurgled and her head wobbled, she was stoked. I sprayed a bit of the Lily of the Valley perfume onto her wrist, like I seen on telly. I showed her the card, and she gurgled back, ‘I love you too.’
I got the
shepherd’s pie out of the freezer and zapped it in the microwave. Feeding her wasn’t easy; most of it she just dribbled out her mouth, but that was okay. I cleaned her up. After dinner I took Mum back to the nursing home. I knew I was a rat for dumping her. But what else was I to do? If I kept her here at the yard, Black Jack would go ballistic. Anyhow, I visit Mum all the time. It’s a shame no one else does, but I don’t mind being her only visitor, after all, I am her son.
About the author
Marlish Glorie is a Perth-based author and teacher of creative writing at the Fremantle Arts Centre. She also mentors young and emerging writers. Her first novel, The Bookshop on Jacaranda Street, was published by Fremantle Press in 2009, followed by a self-published eBook Sea Dog Hotel in 2013. She is currently working on another novel and several short stories. That her short story ‘Machine Man’ is being published after receiving a highly commended in the Brotherhood of St Laurence Hope Prize is seen as a significant step forward in her writing career. When not writing, Marlish can be found either reading a book or tending to the many native shrubs and trees crammed into her suburban garden.
We are Looking at Hun Chen
David Porter
Highly Commended
We are looking at Hun Chen. It is not his
Real name and his ethnicity is of no relevance.
He is a nobody, a citizen of nowhere, a
Stateless person, a non-existent person,
Up there, see, there, on the middle deck,
Leaning on the rail at the stern of The
Golden Rule. There, where he has stood
In ports around the world for eleven years past.
See there, with a cigarette, on the middle deck,
Where he stands with one knee up, leaning on
The rail at the stern of The Golden Rule.
Who is this man? He is always there and
What drives a man like this, what hopes, what
Dreams? This is a man, we might assume, a slave
Of sorts, a man long beyond despair. For him
Hope is a luxury too dangerous to take aboard.
Like thousands of his kind at sea around
The world, he lives in fear of going overboard,
Literally in fact, metaphorically no less
But he is just another man and we can assume,
Like us he burns with hope and hate and fear and love.
He yearns for home but here he is, in the Port of
Melbourne, here in this far distant corner at the bottom
Of the world. Look, see there, you are looking at him.
There, in his usual spot, on the middle deck, leaning
On the rail at the stern of The Golden Rule.
He was standing there three years ago, one warm Sunday
Afternoon when five small boys on the dock waved
And beckoned him that Sunday three years or so ago.
Now turn to Wendy Watson,
Mrs Wendy Watson, divorced woman,
Aged thirty-five of Number 3 Banksia Circle
In the suburb of Beaumaris;
The leafy beachside suburb
Of Beaumaris-on-the-Bay,
30 kilometres from Melbourne.
She is the mother of three boys
But they are with their father
And his partner this weekend.
Wendy had her girlfriends around
For lunch just yesterday but
Today, it is very quiet. She is
Watching television on a sunny
Sunday afternoon at 3:00 pm
And contemplating nothing.
She is free. She won’t see the boys
Until after school tomorrow.
Actually she is contemplating
Many things but nothing much
That she could yet put words to.
She has a splendid vista of the bay
From her upstairs sitting room
And a terrace balcony to die for
But not today, the curtains are closed
Tight against the sun and all the world.
This is her time, her Tim Tam, time-out
Time, her respite from the boys, her
Time alone, her time to find herself
Again. She is working on it and not
Without result. She has found a
Strength inside herself, a defiance.
She has forgotten another sunny
Sunday afternoon, three years ago;
A children’s birthday party treat when they
Watched a ship go up the bay and drove up
To the docks to see it berth in the Port of
Melbourne. She has forgotten how she stood
There on the dock in awe of that ship’s massive
Weight and how they were invited to go aboard
By a Chinaman and how, God knows, they went,
Her and five boys with her, up the gang plank
And down into the bowels of that huge ship,
And how they saw the engine room,
The mess room and the tiny cabin
Where he lived and she has forgotten
How she lost them all in the holds of
That great monster with her there, left
On deck alone, looking back towards
Beaumaris. It was a nightmare
Misadventure best forgotten and she
Did. By the time they were safe ashore
And speeding home again it was
All locked away in a distant past.
Except of course the boys told everyone
At school about the birthday party treat
And it was raised in table talk at every
Birthday party since. Oh God forbid!
Hun Chen never ventured far ashore,
In Melbourne, not much further than the docks.
He had never ventured far before, not anywhere,
In port; not since he slipped out of another life
And found himself at sea, adrift upon the oceans
And far from any hope of home but he was in
Melbourne and he had it in his head that one sunny
Sunday he would walk around the distant beaches
And visit the boys he had aboard the ship in Melbourne
Three years or so before. He had kept their note pinned
Inside his locker door these three years past and he
Had made a promise to them that one day
He would return and visit them. 3 Banksia Circle,
Beaumaris. He knew that somehow he would find them.
So when that Melbourne Sunday came he went ashore.
He starts out in the quiet of the early morning
First in thongs, then, when they fall apart,
He walks on another twenty-five kilometres along the
Foreshore and the beach with nothing on his feet.
The going soon gets painful on his soft,
Shipboard, fleshy soles but he keeps going.
He finds an anesthetic in defiance. You can see
Each shuffling step he takes is a victory over
Something. Is it fear that drives this man or
Hate or hope or love or is it sheer elation?
We could be looking at a man who has made
His break for freedom. We saw him leave
The ship. We saw him leave the dock so
Should we not be asking what this man
Is doing here? He could be an illegal alien!
Just step back a moment, please. Look at the
Bigger picture, see, there he is at midday,
Cutting through the crowd on the beachfront
Promenade at St Kilda. He is heading south
And making quite a speed. See, there, the Chinese man
And there is the pier and the ice-cream couples, children
Laughing, dogs barking, traffic building on
The Esplanade. See the ferry coming in, the yachts
There racing today around the inner harbo
ur,
The city skyline towering in the distance, the
Mountains in the background and the onshore breeze
Buffeting the whole picture into silence.
Step back further please. Allow the man to pass
And take a moment to contemplate what it is
That is pumping through his veins. If it is hope
It is not something he could dare admit to; not
To himself and there is no one else to whom he
Could ever make such an admission. For men
Like him there is no hope. He has learned to live
Without. He has learned to live without a lot of
Things and hope is nothing to him. Yet we saw
The note pinned inside his locker and it said this
Man is alive; alive to the possibility of another
Life, at least to thinking that one day there could be
Another life to live and now we know that day may
Well have come for him. He has walked all day,
Poor man and he is exhausted. Now he is standing
There in front of Wendy’s front door CCTV at 8:00pm
That same Sunday evening.
So we return to Wendy Watson, a woman for whom
Hope is just a word like faith and love and charity;
Corrupted by hypocrisy, devoid of meaning, utterly
Debased except that if she were asked we might
Discern from the dismissive tone of her reply that
There is more to it than that, hostility in fact. No it
Is more than that again. There is hatred in that voice.
It is as if somehow she has been hurt by hope or
Faith or love or charity or all of it combined.
To take it any further would be cruel. The
Subject is best avoided. Except that we can say
There are two sides to hope and faith and love and
Charity. There is hope and faith and love and charity
Cut into stone in capitals, held high, proclaimed
Aloud as virtue and on the other hand, there are those
Hope: An Anthology Page 7