by Alice Pung
‘MARLY! Where are you, girl? Come here right now!’
It was Grandma, hollering. Marly sighed and put her pen down on her school exercise book, feeling annoyed. She’d been trying to write down the lyrics to ‘Thriller’ as it played over the radio, but now she’d missed some of the words.
She sat up on her parents’ bed and checked the time on the radio alarm clock: 4:23 pm flashed in red digits. Marly sighed and trudged downstairs to the kitchen, but Grandma wasn’t there. She looked out the window and saw clothes hanging on the hills hoist. She walked out into the backyard.
‘What is it now, Grandma?’ she said. But Grandma was nowhere to be seen.
Then Marly heard a low groan coming from the garage, followed by Grandma’s voice. ‘Where is that lazy girl? Sure taking her time!’
‘I am here, Grandma,’ asked Marly, feeling irritated as she peered into the garage. She felt her knees go weak when she saw her mum lying on her side on the floor of the garage. A box of skirt pockets had spilled across the concrete floor next to her.
A million thoughts rushed through Marly’s mind. Once, Marly had come across her mother crumpled over the sewing machine in enormous pain, her finger nailed down by the needle, and blood squirting all over the sewing table. But this time, to her relief, she couldn’t see any blood.
Her mother groaned loudly and clutched at her stomach.
‘What’s wrong, Mum?’ Marly cried anxiously.
Her mother made no reply, just groaned again – a long, terrible sound.
‘Your mum is going to have her baby, that’s what!’ yelled Grandma. ‘I want you to call your dad at the factory NOW! Run back in the house and tell him to come home immediately!’
Marly ran to the rotary phone in their living room. Her fingers shook as she dialled her father’s work number. When she reached him, Marly yelled, ‘Dad, come home quick, Mum is having the baby!’
‘I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,’ said her dad. ‘If the baby starts to come, call an ambulance. And Marly, you’ll need to stay with her to translate!’ He hung up.
Marly ran back to the garage to see Grandma’s hands massaging Marly’s mum’s shoulders. ‘Stop it, ma!’ her mother cried. Marly watched helplessly as her mum kept trying to raise herself up on one elbow. ‘I’m so uncomfortable. I need to sit up!’
‘If you sit up, the baby will drop out of you,’ scolded Marly’s grandma. ‘Stay down and wait until you get to hospital!’ Grandma spotted Marly hovering uncertainly in the garage doorway. ‘Did you call your dad?’ she demanded.
‘Yes, he’s coming now,’ replied Marly. ‘Where’s Grandpa?’
‘I told him to go and light the incense sticks, to pray to Buddha for a safe arrival,’ said Grandma. ‘Quick, go join him. The more prayers, the faster they will be answered!’
Marly didn’t want to leave her mum suffering like this, especially under the bossy care of Grandma, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to stay either. She found Grandpa on his knees in front of the Buddha shrine in their living room. The white porcelain Laughing Buddha was very fat, with shocking pink cheeks. He held a set of beads in one hand and there were five happy porcelain children crawling all over him, pulling at his earlobes and nipples. His delighted grin stretched his three chins. Grandma had bought the statue from an Asian grocery store in Footscray to oversee Marly’s mum’s pregnancy.
Grandpa handed Marly a stick of incense. It glowed orange and a thin trail of fragrant smoke wafted through the air. Marly joined him on her knees.
‘May Buddha keep my daughter safe from harm,’ prayed Grandpa. ‘And help her deliver a healthy and strong baby boy.’ He looked at Marly. ‘Now your turn.’
Marly began, ‘May Buddha protect my mum . . .’ but she couldn’t bring herself to say that she wanted a brother. A small part of her resented how much everyone was hoping this baby would be a boy. It made her feel bad about being a girl. ‘May Buddha help my mum have a healthy and strong baby.’ Marly peeked sideways at Grandpa. Luckily he was too lost in his own prayers to notice she hadn’t followed his words exactly.
Suddenly, a car pulled up into the driveway. Marly leapt up from the floor and ran to open the front door. Her dad had arrived! Hooray!
‘Mum’s in the garage,’ Marly said excitedly when he rushed into the house. She followed him to the garage and watched as he helped her mum up off the ground. Marly’s mum moaned and Marly flinched. She hated seeing her gentle mother in pain. They walked her around to the front of the house and helped her into the car. Then Grandma climbed in beside Marly’s mum.
‘Hey, Dad, can I come too?’ Marly asked hopefully. She’d gone to hospital once when Grandpa had a fall and she’d even got to ride in the back of an ambulance. The doctors had told her that she’d been a very good translator, and Grandpa had been so proud of her. She felt like this was going to be another adventure and she didn’t want to miss out.
‘No, sweet pup,’ her dad said. ‘You stay with Grandpa. He may not look it, but he’s very worried right now and he needs you. I promise I will call as soon as the baby arrives.’
Marly opened her mouth to protest, but her dad had called her ‘sweet pup’, which made her feel warm and loved, and he’d told her to look after Grandpa, which made her feel useful. She closed her mouth and waved silently as the car drove off, her mother’s pale face peering out the passenger window.
When Marly went back inside, Grandpa was still on his knees on the floor, furiously praying to the Buddha with his eyes closed. She left him alone and went back into her parents’ bedroom and turned on their alarm clock radio, hoping that they would play ‘Billie Jean’ again. No such luck. Some dumb song called ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ was on.
Marly lay on her stomach on the bed and looked around the room. Ever since her grandparents moved in, she had shared her parents’ bedroom. She loved sleeping in the big double bed with her mum and dad, but now she realised that things were going to change: there was a second-hand white cot in one corner, a box of nappies in another corner, and a basket of baby clothes and blankets spilling out of their wardrobe. Marly spread her arms and legs out on the bed like a star, knowing that very soon she’d have to share this room – and her parents – with someone else. She wondered what the new baby would be like, and at what age they’d be any fun. Because from what she’d seen of them, babies just slept and cried. She lay there in the warm, cramped room, worried and wondering, until her eyes slowly closed and she fell fast asleep.
It seemed like only ten minutes later that she heard Grandpa calling her.
‘My Linh!’ he cried. ‘My Linh! Your dad’s on the phone for you! The baby has arrived!’
Marly glanced at the clock radio. The time was 7.57 – she’d been asleep for almost three hours! Marly got up quickly, still a bit groggy from her nap. She raced to the phone, which Grandpa held out to her with a massive grin on his face.
‘Hello, Dad?’ Marly spoke into the receiver.
‘Your mum had the baby!’ her father told her in a voice filled with joy. ‘And it’s a boy!’
MARLY’S mum stayed in hospital for a week. In that week, Marly watched Grandma clean the house from top to bottom. On the first day she took down all the curtains and washed them, and re-lined all the cupboards with Target advertising brochures. Seeing all the jars and containers on the ground, Marly couldn’t help herself. She lined them up and stood back with a rubber band and a pellet of paper folded over and over to make a bullet. She’d seen the boys at school make these easy slingshots, and whenever she got the chance, Marly liked to practise her aim.
‘Ay!’ yelled Grandma when she saw what Marly was up to. ‘Put that down! What do you think you’re doing?’
‘Just practising my aim,’ said Marly. ‘I won’t break any jars, Grandma. It’s only paper!’
‘Stop being silly and make yourself useful,’ Grandma ordered, as she started to put everything back into the cupboard. Marly picked up a peanut-butter jar. It was was way past its e
xpiry date. Just as she was about to toss it into the bin, Grandma noticed.
‘Stop!’
‘But Grandma, it’s been off for months,’ Marly explained.
‘Hand that back here!’ Grandma commanded.
Annoyed, Marly passed the peanut butter to Grandma.
‘I don’t see any mould,’ Grandma said. ‘Wasting good food! I ask her to help and she’s more of a nuisance.’
Marly had never felt so cross – she had only been trying to be helpful – but she didn’t answer back because her mum had told her to be good for Grandma. She missed her mum terribly right then.
‘I will make a satay with it,’ declared Grandma. ‘Peanuts are good for producing breastmilk.’
Eww, thought Marly. She hadn’t really thought about how her mum was now going to be a food machine. Gross.
After Marly and Grandma put all the things back into the cupboards, Grandma asked Marly for a pen and paper. ‘I’m making a list of special ingredients to get in the Footscray grocery store so your mother can sit through the month.’
Marly had no idea what Grandma was going on about. ‘You’re not going to make Mum sit down for a whole month, are you, Grandma?’ she asked, worried.
‘No, no,’ said Grandma. ‘Don’t be silly.’
Phew, sighed Marly.
‘No, your mother will mostly be lying down. She needs to rest and recover. She can also sit, but she must not watch television or cry as that could damage her eyes. Her eyes will be very weak after childbirth. So will her liver and her heart and her bladder.’
Marly went back into her parents’ bedroom and retrieved her pen and notebook, and tore a page out of it for Grandma. Grandma declared, ‘You will come with me to the shops now. I’m going to buy special ingredients to make healing soups for your mother.’
Marly was pleased to hear this because she really wanted to get out of the house. And it was fun to catch the bus with Grandma to Footscray. They visited the Chinese herbal medicine clinic, where all the walls were lined with floor to ceiling white shelves and jars. Inside some of the jars were dried plants and herbs and mushrooms, but inside other jars were dried insects and even what looked like dead spiders. Marly shuddered when she saw them, wondering what they were supposed to fix. Luckily, Grandma did not need to buy those for her mother’s recovery. The Chinese medicine doctor didn’t look like a normal doctor. He wore chequered trousers and a woollen vest with diamond shapes on it, and he looked as old as Grandpa. Grandma spoke to him in Cantonese, and Marly watched as he carefully measured each herb. They left with many packets wrapped in white butcher’s paper that smelled strange and woody to Marly.
‘Now you’ve been so good I will get you a treat,’ Grandma told Marly, and walked Marly to a shop called T Cavallaro. Inside, it smelled like roasted coffee, and Marly stared at the cakes and nougat behind the glass cabinet. Grandma isn’t so bad after all, she thought with surprise. Grandma bought two long sticks of almond nougat and four pastries called canolli, even though Marly had been eyeing off the chocolate doughnuts.
‘You can get doughnuts at supermarkets,’ scoffed Grandma. ‘These are better.’
And Grandma was right – when Marly bit into the canolli it was delicious: custardy and creamy and crunchy, all at the same time.
When they finally got home, Grandma started boiling the strange herbs together. Marly thought the smell was disgusting, like warm rotting wood. She crinkled her nose, and Grandma noticed.
‘My Linh, go outside and bring in the laundry,’ she said. ‘Don’t forget the shower curtains.’
Grandma had taken down the shower curtains that separated their bed space from the rest of the living room, and washed them. She is obsessed with cleaning, sighed Marly, the lovely morning already forgotten as she stomped out to the backyard. And I’m sick of being ordered around!
Grandma had left her black cloth slippers on top of the shower curtains to stop them from blowing away and Marly slipped her feet into them without thinking. They fit perfectly. Grandma’s feet must be tiny, Marly realised. They were so comfortable too. The slippers glided across the plastic shower curtain smoothly, almost as if she was sliding on oil. She did a little spin, and it was magical. They were the perfect dancing shoes! But where could she get a plastic shower curtain to dance on? she wondered. And how could she borrow the slippers without Grandma knowing?
That evening, while Grandma was in the kitchen making dinner and Grandpa was asleep on the sofa, Marly’s dad came home with an enormous bunch of flowers.
‘Wah!’ exclaimed Grandma, ‘Are you trying to be just like the Australians, wasting money on romantic gestures? Those must have cost at least twenty dollars!’
Marly’s dad scowled and she knew exactly how he felt. It seemed like Grandma could never find anything good to say about anything. ‘I didn’t buy these,’ Marly’s dad explained, and Marly could hear a tone of annoyance in his voice. ‘My work gave them to the family to congratulate us.’
Marly thought that this was a very kind gesture, but then she heard Grandma scoff, ‘You can’t eat flowers, can you? You can’t wear flowers. Why didn’t they use that money to get something useful instead, like a tin of formula milk or a small baby jumpsuit? I will never understand the wastefulness of these Australians.’
Her parents were very patient to put up with Grandma, Marly thought. Grandma’s shrill voice had woken Grandpa up and he walked over to the kitchen in his dark blue pyjama suit. ‘What’s the fuss?’ he asked.
Marly’s dad changed the subject: ‘Come on, everyone, hurry up and eat the dinner Grandma has prepared. Then we’re all going to the hospital for a visit. But we have to be quick – visiting hours end at eight!’
‘Don’t take those to the hospital in case they give the baby allergies,’ instructed Grandma, pointing to the flowers. ‘Put them on the Buddha shrine instead.’
Then she served them dinner of rice, a soup with tomato, pork and pineapple in it, and chicken fried with ginger and garlic. Grandma was a good cook, thought Marly, but she missed her mother’s cooking.
After dinner, Marly, Dad, Grandma and Grandpa bundled into the car and drove to the Western General Hospital in Footscray, an enormous brown cement building nestled between a street of old wooden houses. They took the elevator up to the maternity ward, and in one of the rooms separated by a green curtain, was Marly’s mum. Marly ran in and gave her mum a huge hug. ‘I’ve missed you, girl,’ her mum told her, and Marly felt both so happy and sad she wanted to cry. Then she noticed the small plastic tub on wheels next to the bed.
Wrapped in a white blanket, he was tinier than Marly ever imagined. His sleeping face was round and pouty, and his closed eyes were shaped like thin crescent moons. Even Marly had to admit that he was the cutest thing she had ever seen. The collar of his terry-towelling blue onesie was just poking out beneath the blanket.
Grandma wanted a hold straightaway but Marly’s mum told her not to wake up the sleeping baby. Marly secretly wanted to hold him too, because she had never seen such a small human being before. Something in her chest exploded with warmth every time Marly looked at the little sleeping creature in the plastic tub – her new brother. The family chatted for a while, and marvelled over the baby’s perfect face.
Marly’s mum had a tray table with some jelly and a small Dixie cup of ice-cream on it. ‘I saved these for you, Marly,’ her mum told her, ‘because I knew you were coming tonight. Have you been good?’
Before Marly could answer, Grandma said, ‘This girl has been surprisingly good. She’s helped me clean, cook and even shop. We went to the Chinese medicine store today.’ Grandma brought out a metal thermos and handed it to Marly’s mum. A heavy woody smell filled the air. ‘I made you some herbal soup. It took hours to cook so don’t waste it. I will bring some more tomorrow.’
Marly’s mum made a disgusted face, and Marly hid a smile. Poor Mum.
When they arrived back home, it was almost nine o’clock. ‘Righty O, my girl,’ said Marly�
��s dad. ‘Let’s sort out your new bed.’
Has Dad bought me a new bed? wondered Marly. Her heart beat faster. Maybe it would be a red car-shaped bed like the one she’d seen in a television movie. That was an ace bed; it had even had front fender lights that lit up as night lamps.
‘It’s in here,’ her dad told her, leading her to the living room. He walked over to the sofa and plumped up the cushions.
Marly’s heart fell. Her new bed was the sofa. The baby got a cot with a new mattress (her mum said that even though the cot was second-hand she didn’t want the baby to be sleeping on another baby’s pee), and now Marly was getting kicked out of her parents’ bed and onto the sofa.
She couldn’t hide her disappointment.
But then her dad started moving furniture around. He pushed a lounge chair to each end of the long sofa. ‘A big ship for my little captain,’ he said. He got sheets and a doona from the linen cupboard and started to drape them over the new bed until it looked like a colourful padded ship. He even made a flag out of a pillowcase and went to the garage and got an old broom to use as the flagpole. ‘Jump in, Pirate Marly!’
Marly squealed with delight. She leapt into the pirate ship. Now Grandma couldn’t tell her off for jumping on furniture! Her father tucked her in, and drew the duvet under her chin. ‘You have been such a helpful girl,’ he told her, stroking her forehead, ‘and so good in emergencies. I am going to tell you a story.’
Marly grinned. She loved her dad’s stories. Unlike the happily-ever-after stories Marly’s teachers read at school, her dad’s stories were adventurous and entertaining, and the good guys didn’t always win.
‘Do you know your brother’s Chinese horoscope?’ her dad asked her.
Marly felt a sudden stab of resentment. Why did everything have to be about her brother? She couldn’t be angry at the baby – he was so new and sweet, and none of this was his fault – but she was cross at her dad. ‘No,’ she answered sulkily.