For years, I have been daydreaming about moving to Perth or Melbourne. Perhaps then, I think, Mum wouldn’t get so upset about me not visiting often enough.
By the sixth link, we move into the academic research. This makes my concern feel a little more real. If the scientists are studying it, surely the difficulties I feel aren’t entirely in my head.
Now, driving home from Wollongong University to visit my parents, past the roads with the thick median strips, and turning onto Mount Ousley with its highway of oncoming traffic, I feel no urge to veer off the road. If there was ever a place, this would be it. Turn around to head downhill, veer off to the left so no other cars are implicated. Make it final from the drop off the edge of the cliff.
But I don’t think about that anymore.
Each day, I think instead about something else.
An invitation to speak on mental health and feminism.
A casual job tutoring a creative writing undergraduate class.
Passing my PhD performance review.
An upcoming trip to New Zealand.
‘Thanks,’ I whisper into the car.
16
When mum arrives in Manhattan, I take her out for pizza. It’s a Tuesday evening in June, 2017. I am twenty-nine years old.
I’ve been here three weeks already, so we ride the subway to Brooklyn’s Williamsburg, and head to a place with the best pizza I’ve found in New York. Lots of people, and loud music. It is the kind of place I struggle to breathe in, and so I have a feeling she will love it. She is always looking for noise to fill her up.
I have been fantasising about this city for a decade. I have been writing since I was nineteen and travelling for three months each year since I was eighteen, but two things always felt out of reach: making it to New York and finishing a draft of my first book. And now I find myself having done both, but with the unexpected addition of my mother.
As we eat our mozzarella, caciocavallo and parmigiano pizza, my mother picking off tiny flakes of chilli, I ask if we can discuss boundaries. I am anxious about how we are going to manage our differences and live together so closely for two weeks.
She says, ‘I know the rule. No talking before midday.’ She laughs.
‘You have to be out of the apartment between six in the morning and midday so I can write.’ If my mother can see you, she will speak to you.
‘What? No! Where will I go for six hours?’
‘Okay, fine, two hours, between ten and twelve.’
‘But not the first morning. Can’t I have one morning’s leeway?’
I think: It’s a Thursday. I write on Thursdays.
Instead, I say: ‘Okay, fine. We’ll see.’
The next morning, she gets up and leaves of her own accord for two hours.
My mother floods our Facebook feeds and I pretend to be annoyed but am mostly pleased that one of us is documenting the trip.
Day 3, New York—Another big day! Started off with a little walk in our local village to the supermarket for a few supplies and of course a trip to the local library. We then caught the subway to Chelsea Markets and had lunch then walked the High Line, which was really nice. After that we came home for a little rest. At night we went to Chinatown and had the most amazing dumplings followed by the highlight of my day, a foot and leg massage, which was amazing. Will be going back for sure. These little feet of mine sure have done some walking these last few days. Oh, and went on the longest and steepest escalator I have ever seen #newyorkgirls
(20 new photos attached)
In the comments section, she posts her first meme: a woman exaggeratedly winking into the camera. I didn’t know she knew how to use memes.
It is one in the morning when we wake to the sound of singing. The apartment is a fifth-floor walk-up, not close to the ground, so I am amused at the strength of the man’s voice coming up from the street, especially at this hour.
I have noticed that about New Yorkers—when they feel like singing, they sing. (The city reminds me of my mother, the way it enjoys noise so openly.) It was jarring at first, having come here from a Sydney culture of keep quiet, pretend to behave yourself and do your business behind closed doors. The first time it happened I was walking along the street and a skinny man walked towards me, beating his head to one side, loudly mouthing rap lyrics into the space between our bodies. I couldn’t help but wonder, is he okay? But then he carried on by, as if singing out loud in the middle of the day on a busy street was a common thing to do. And I quickly realised: here, it is. The second time, standing on the sidewalk, inhaling the two after-dinner cigarettes I allow myself each evening, I watched a woman dancing while waiting for the traffic lights to change. I could tell she was a local by the plain black Nikes she was wearing—New York is a city made for walkers and the fashion-conscious. Later, trying to move down the subway stairs with the peak-hour crowd, another woman, wearing those headphones that cover your whole ears and half the side of your face, was singing Eminem. No one else seemed to think it strange.
Below us, the man continues singing. I recognise the lyrics but can’t name the song until he gets to the chorus. ‘Turning Tables’ by Adele.
My apartment is beautiful, with its exposed brick, its floorboards partly covered by a Turkish rug, its minimal industrial furniture and twelve months’ worth of The New Yorker in an antique magazine rack between the green velvet two-seater and the entry. But it’s also small. The front door opens directly into a five-by-three-metre studio space. Along the wall next to the door, a tiny kitchen the size of my open armspan, and a small bathroom. A couple of steps ahead, there is a desk in the front-left corner, a two-seater lounge along the opposite side wall. Then, a few stairs—but no door—leading to the loft bedroom area. Neither of us can speak on the phone without the other hearing the whole conversation.
Mum is up in the loft, spread over the double bed; I am downstairs on what the owners refer to as ‘the Harry Potter bed’—a thin futon mattress kept doubled over as a seat under the stairs and spread open on the floor when I want to sleep each night. If I can hear the singer, so can she. She is a light sleeper.
Learning to sleep well is an ongoing struggle. My father falls asleep anywhere—in beach chairs on family picnics, in friends’ living rooms when we go to visit. But still at night in his own bed he tosses and turns, sometimes accidentally kicking my mother. If my dad is quieter than usual and I ask what’s wrong, he’ll tell me he’s not sleeping well, which is to say he’s not feeling good.
My mother’s sleep is also punctuated by worry. From what she mentions to me in throwaway lines over breakfast, it appears her mind fidgets with anxiety, her body never fully shutting off in case I need her. When I was a child, I remember, I would call out to her in a voice barely above a whisper and while my father could sleep through a party, my mother would be in my room within moments.
For me, it is not sleep I struggle with, but the process of falling asleep. Each night I go to bed worrying how long it will take, thinking of those early post-accident years when it would take two, three, sometimes four hours to quieten myself. They were painful hours that I later learned to shorten with a lover’s body or alcohol.
In my early twenties, a friend’s mother said you can tell what a person’s mental health is like by the state of their fingernails. Perhaps sleep is an equally good indicator.
I post on Facebook asking about my friends’ relationship to sleep and the thread takes off, getting more than sixty comments within twenty-four hours. Sleep, it seems, is on everybody’s mind. There is talk of watching movies on the couch to help with falling asleep, of surviving on four to five hours per night, of the self-loathing and shame that settles over a friend as he lies in bed at night. Another writes of a disembodied experience, full of dreams that take him ten to eleven hours per night to come through. There are mentions of conscious gratitude in those who sleep easy: my cousin who sa
ys, ‘How good is bed!’ each night as his head hits the pillow; a friend who thinks about how thankful she is for her comfy bed before saying ‘Ahhhh, sleep! Bliss!’ Then come the usuals: cups of green tea, exercise to exhaust the body, turning devices off early, and so on.
I thank the lord for my bed every night! My favourite piece of furniture in the entire house , writes one well-slept friend.
One day, I am home alone, working. Mum has gone out for her daily two-hour adventure to give me space to write. I take a break from a scene I’m editing and check Facebook. On my mother’s wall:
Lost somewhere in New York!
I think it’s good for her to learn to navigate new spaces on her own. But I feel like a shitty daughter, pushing her out onto the street each morning. That day, she manages to find her way home, excited that she did so on her own. Several mornings later, though, she calls me in tears. She’s been to Coney Island and back—a two-hour return trip—by accident, while trying to return to the West Village from Midtown. She’s managed to find her way back and is one subway stop’s walk away but can’t figure out how to get to our apartment.
‘Just get a taxi, and give them the address,’ I tell her.
‘No, wait, I know where I am now!’ comes her gleeful response and less than twenty minutes later she turns up at our door.
A few mornings later, I wait for my mother to leave the apartment.
Her body moves heavily through the space, her hands repositioning the rubbish bin, turning and re-turning the washing that’s drying on the stair railing. I am always waiting for her voice to steal my focus away from work.
‘What will you do today?’ I ask, placing a plate of eggs and sourdough in front of her.
‘Go sit in the garden, listen to people’s conversations.’
She is good at that, pretending things don’t bother her when perhaps they really do.
‘You won’t be bored?’ I ask.
‘No, I’m all right, don’t worry about me.’
But I do worry, even though I don’t want to, and perhaps that is partly why it is so difficult to have her staying with me, in this apartment where we hear each other shit and sleep and stir tea (me) or send compulsive Facebook messages back home (her). I worry that she is bored, or lonely, or upset, and yet each morning I kick her out of the apartment and she smiles and pretends this is the only way she’d have it after all.
Her mouth is constantly hungry to speak.
(My editor suggests there is perhaps something to be acknowledged here about evasion. ‘Silence and solitude can be a defence,’ she tells me. This is true, I think, but not the only truth. It takes me days to realise: it is difficult to relax into myself when in the company of others. Is this what she means?)
Later, at the end of the day, my mother uploads twenty-one new photos, tags me, and writes:
Day 6, New York—Well, today was to be a rest day but that didn’t happen. This morning I headed out to the grocery store and got down the block and heard the church bells ring so I decided I would go to mass. Not sure why I was drawn there, even had morning tea with them after the service. Next Chloe and I decided we better eat healthy today so found this place called Sweet Green. It was pretty amazing food. Next we headed towards Brooklyn Bridge—such a nice view and thousands of other people. We met lots of interesting characters along the way. Here in our neighbourhood it’s Gay Pride Week so lots of wild and wonderful people around and lots of titties on show. Went to my first ever comedy show tonight, which was interesting, they sure do love the Aussies #newyorkgirls
And later yet, when she is in the loft and I am downstairs, she posts: Are you all sick of my holiday spam yet?
I have begun pushing my mother into a box, so that I might escape the one she has built around me. When we were younger, she made the rules and I had to please her. Now, the loneliness is audible in her voice. Every now and again, she tries to make a rule, silently begs me to give her this, but I cannot take the bait.
(A lover reads this chapter and suggests that perhaps this isn’t a box my mother has built for me, but rather my own projections. ‘That is to say,’ he writes, ‘I’m not sure we’ve established here that the prison is your mum’s devising, as opposed to a characteristic of your grief.’ I realise he’s right, and that I have no idea how to break out of this way of being.)
I’m sorry, Mum.
She buys herself a blue cap with NYC embroidered in silver on the front. While I am working, she posts a selfie wearing it in front of the subway, with the status update: Don’t think I will ever work this subway out.
When I was nine or ten, I went to a birthday party at the Whitlam Centre in Liverpool. A large sports and recreation centre, the place was always packed with bodies moving through basketball courts, chlorine-filled pools, gym machines, athletics equipment. In the afternoons and on weekends, groups of schoolchildren poured in to stake out their patch of grass for birthday parties.
I was attending one, and a bunch of us made our way to the deep end of the biggest indoor pool. Each kid waited their turn to step up onto the dive platform and jump into the water, before surfacing, climbing out and waiting in line again.
When it was my turn, I stepped up easily and quickly— I was afraid of many things but water was not one of them. Around us, other kids ran, their bare feet slapping the rough granite floor as the lifeguards yelled at them to walk and their mothers called out that it was time for ice-cream or hot chips or more sunscreen. I leapt into the air, trying to push myself skywards before the fall into water. I slipped down into the chlorine, a pin of a body dropping to the bottom, a smile on my goggle-clad face. My feet touched the bottom and I pushed off, waiting for my face to surface.
On the way up, I felt limbs pushing on my head and shoulders. It was not the sudden, heavy impact of another kid accidentally jumping on me, but more gradual. I waited for the hands to move so I could float to the surface. I was not worried.
Seconds passed and the hands did not disappear. I tried to push myself upwards. By this stage my feet could no longer reach the bottom and I had only my hands to try to propel myself. But the harder I pushed up, the harder the hands pushed down.
Some bubbles escaped in a small cough through my lips, as I realised someone was deliberately holding me under. I looked around. So many bodies. Bikinis and board shorts, one-pieces and rash-shirts. Thin waiflike girls held afloat beside the thick waistlines of middle-aged mothers.
It was an odd feeling, seeing their bodies so close but being unable to touch them or ask for help.
I started to panic.
I began fighting the hands holding me down. I kicked, and felt my foot connect with a body. I shuffled my shoulders, using my arms to try to get their hands off me.
A few seconds later, the hands let go and I surfaced quickly.
Now, years later, I don’t remember whose face was waiting, only that it belonged to a kid, laughing, carrying on about how they had tricked me.
Still to this day, when I visit the beach or a swimming pool with friends and we begin to muck around, splashing each other, joking about pushing each other in, I laugh and play along but then I take on a serious tone and say, ‘Please, whatever you do, don’t hold my head under water.’
I have to wait for them to agree, without a smile on their face, before I can continue.
Now, as an adult, it often feels like those hands belong to my mother.
(My editor: That’s a hard truth. Could be hurtful whichever way it’s spun?
Me: Don’t all children feel this way?)
My therapist talks a lot about needing to differentiate from your parents, and how normal—and healthy—this is. During the past year or so, I feel like I have been playing catch-up on this from when I was seventeen and it was cut short. But also, I am trying to take responsibility for my feelings. And so, while I do feel suffocated by my mother, and there
is extra parental weight from her having lost three children, perhaps it is also true that much of this perceived pressure is coming from inside me, rather than from her. I’m trying to shift this.
This is my mother’s post from the day she got lost:
Day 7, New York—Don’t have much to report, not a real good day today, nothing seemed to go my way. Take the number one subway they said, yes, sounds easy, but I went the wrong way and ended up an hour away in the opposite direction, when it should have been five minutes. I finally found my way back to Manhattan. I was in search of the Ross department store (well, didn’t find that either) looking for over an hour or so. I stumbled across the Victoria’s Secret store, looked around and made a little purchase then decided to return to our apartment. I had been gone for hours by now. No matter which way I went and how many people I asked I couldn’t seem to find my way to the subway. I ended up in tears on the phone to Chloe, she said just get a taxi but next minute there it was, 7th Ave subway going downtown, and my stop was only three stops away. I met Chloe in our local village and we had Mexican and cocktails, just what I needed after such a stressful day. Tomorrow will be another day with lots of adventure I am sure #newyorkgirls
(14 new photos attached)
My mother doesn’t drink. We ordered a cocktail each and I drank them both.
I often feel like a bad person, and that my relationship with my mother proves it. For so long, I thought being a good person was giving others what they want, but now I’m not so sure about this.
‘You’re so hard on yourself,’ my therapist said before I left for New York, and I took comfort in her words.
Day 9, New York—Not much to report today, had a lovely stroll around our village while Chloe was working. Found Magnolia Bakery and had the most amazing banana pudding (wish I could bring you all home one). Sat for a little while in my favourite park and found a phone that a gentleman who sat next to me briefly left behind on the seat. I finally tracked him down and when he came to meet me I have never seen anyone so happy and thankful. He had the whole street cheering for me, I wish I had videoed it. We are meeting up for a drink in a couple of days. Later in the day we headed towards Times Square. It was Chloe’s turn to shop and you all know how Chloe doesn’t really shop. I then ventured home on my own as Chloe had a workshop and I DIDN’T get lost and stopped and had the most amazing tacos. Goodnight all from New York #newyorkgirls
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