Close to Home

by Alice Pung

  Elsie points to the videos on display, which show women in the back rooms of op-shops sorting out donated goods. Tonnes of stretchy, twice-worn Supré clothes are donated every month, but only 30 per cent of all donations actually make it to the shops; the rest are shipped overseas. This culling means that the poor here can have good things. But the only people who seem to use that word publicly these days – ‘poor’ – are the Brotherhood of St Laurence and university students. Some students use it after coming back from a year of travelling around the world. ‘I’m so poor,’ they say, ‘but at least I gained my independence!’

  In the places they travelled, they could, if they wanted, see the origins of their clothes. In China, silk cloth has been made since the Shang era (1600 BC), and cotton since the Song Dynasty (960–1279). Men picked the cotton and farmed the silkworms, and women wove the cloth. Making a gown was a noble trade back then, or at least that is the way it appears in the museums displaying ancient handicrafts. But often, the marvels of modern manufacturing remain obscure – after all, a student on a self-discovery tour probably does not want to visit a factory where shorts are being sewn. It’s easier to have a neat political statement about the marginalisation of third-world workers printed on a t-shirt. Half the things we wear in Australia, in any case, already come with a prêt-à-porter, socio-economic-political label: Made in China. And because it’s all so cheap, we have more outfits to stuff into the orange donation bags left in our letterboxes than ever before – and most of it ends up getting sent back overseas.

  When my parents first arrived in Australia, they were given a bag of baby clothes from the Brotherhood of St Laurence. My mother took the clothes to the laundromat to wash them, and when she returned she found that someone had emptied out her machine and stolen them all. Since then, my father has travelled the world and returned with impressive Italian dresses for her, but she still mentions that bag of clothes. (My friend Khoa once told me that his mum was also given a bag of baby clothes, and when she opened the bag she realised they were for girls. So he and his brother wore frocks for the first years of their lives.) As a migrant, there is nothing like having the skin of your most precious possession touched by the grace of charity. I understand something of why my mother laments those baby clothes: having a gift pinched is different from someone stealing something you bought and can buy again. And it is difficult to buy such quality in shops these days. You either have to go to boutiques, or visit an op-shop.

  In the morning, the aftermath of the students’ revelry is strewn about the hall again: discarded garments sticky with Bacardi Breezer, cheap beer and occasional traces of vomit and other bodily effluence – signifiers of living an independent life at eighteen, debris to be cleaned up later.

  For Elsie, though, independence is straightening the bows on brown bears with pokey-tongued smiles, and selling suits on half-price day. And for the man walking out of the store, it’s a plastic bag containing clothes that will make him a new man in a new country.

  SILENCE OF THE PHONES

  Dharma Drum Mountain Buddhist Chan (Zen) Meditation Centre in Templestowe

  ‘If you tell your leg to stop hurting,’ says the Venerable Monk, ‘does it listen to you?’ We’re not meant to look at him when he’s speaking. We have to focus on our sitting, because he’s walking around with the incense board in his hand. The incense board is like a flat whacking-stick, to be used if any of us nods off during meditation. When it’s swung against someone’s back, it makes a noise that jolts the rest upright.

  ‘The triangle is the most stable shape in trigonometry,’ the Venerable explains, ‘so that’s why we sit in full lotus.’ The full-lotus position is sitting cross-legged, with your left foot on your right thigh and your right foot on your left thigh. It locks you in, so you can focus on training your mind while sitting in the semi-dark facing a blank wall in the Buddhist Meditation Centre.

  Chan Buddhism, which the Japanese call Zen, was introduced to China from India by a monk named Boddhidharma. It is said that Boddhidharma sat in a cave for nine years before he attained enlightenment. They say he sat so still for so long that his shadow became permanently etched on the wall.

  When we enter the meditation hall, we must leave all our distractions outside. The monk passes around a basket for us to deliver over our final attachment to the outside world. Everyone looks anxiously at the stack of mobile phones as they drop theirs in, but no one says a word, because this is a five-day silent retreat. There is also to be no reading or writing, or tactile contact with anyone.

  According to the most recent census, Buddhism is the fastest growing religion in Australia. We have the earthly signifiers to prove it – the biggest Buddhist temple in the southern hemisphere is the Nan Tien, or ‘Paradise of the South’, a Fo Guang Shan temple near Port Kembla. There are massive stupas in unassuming suburbs, as well as small temples and meditation centres dotted all over the land, for different denominations: Mahayanan, Theravadan, Tibetan, Sri Lankan, Pure Land, Thai Forest Tradition, Zen or Chan. But it’s the heart of the practice, not these buildings, that matters, all the Venerables say. During my first retreat, a friend who almost became a monk explained Chan Buddhism to me: ‘It’s like having a single flower in an empty room. Some people don’t see the point of the empty room, but it’s the empty room that brings out the beauty of the flower.’

  Quite a few Buddhist centres conduct retreats. It is here that people learn fast that the festively plump Buddha in their backyard water feature may be rollicking in fits of laughter, but the actual practice is very painful. If it isn’t, then we’re taking shortcuts. No pain, no gain. Even without any distractions, I find I can’t sit still for half an hour without suffering. The side of my ear itches. Unexpected spasms shoot through my leg. The backside is more complicated than I’d appreciated: every time there is a clenching ache, I discover a new muscle. Out of the corner of my eye I notice 65-year-old Irene, who has sat still for an hour, unperturbed by my restless shifting.

  I also discover how quickly feelings of loving-kindness cultivated in the last half-hour dissipate when the person next to me releases gas. Because we are not supposed to move, all our attention is focused inwards – and we start to magnify all our small irritations. What a torment the mind is.

  Mine starts thinking about mobile phones a lot, because I have just relinquished mine, and also because it used to be my job to sell them. In the silence, I realise that I was a speech peddler – that when I sold a phone, I was helping people to discharge their verbal effluent at the cheapest cost. In the past, only schizophrenics or sages heard a thousand voices in their heads. Now, anyone who doesn’t hear these voices is seen to be cutting themselves off from society. A person’s phone is like a lively child they can show off to others: Look! Mine can sing, vibrate to a tune, show faces, play games and remember important events. But after the sound-and-light show, it is dumped in the bottom of a handbag clotted with congealed lollies and used bus tickets. It is suddenly bewildering to me how a whole living person can be compacted to this small plastic rectangle. I marvel that we don’t have more reverence for the device, because it would have been a miracle to a person living two centuries ago. The quiet also reminds me that there used to be a time when people saved their speech for certain periods, a time when words had more weight.

  After a few days, I begin to do things without so much witless white-noise commentary in my mind. Our heads, hands, ears and eyes are kept busy in other ways. The gong wakes us up at 4.30 in the morning, while it is still dark, to do yoga exercises so our muscles don’t cramp up. Between silent sittings, we sweep and mop and clean. We eat our meals in silence, so we can reflect on all the efforts of the thousands of sentient beings it took for a single grain of rice to reach our bowls: from the first person, who planted the rice seeds, to the last, who scooped it into the dish.

  After eating, we rinse our bowls with hot water and drink up the residue, so nothing is wasted. We wash up. The Venerable then fills each of o
ur bowls almost to the brim with water, and directs us to walk around the great perimeter of the centre without spilling a single drop. It takes me three attempts to understand how much effort it takes to be careful. Then we go back to our sitting.

  My fellow retreat-goers are not people with lots of time on their hands. They are Chinese parents and professionals and other full-time workers who have saved up their annual leave to do this. In theory, it’s about being present in all our thoughts and actions. In practice, it’s about learning to sleep through the night when a stranger in the bunk below is snoring heavily from a cold. It’s about quietening your mind down enough that you are no longer affected by severe, irrational annoyance, and about recognising that a noise is just a noise. And if sleeping through the night is impossible, then it’s about not whingeing in the morning.

  When the retreat ends, we are allowed to talk again and our mobile phones are handed back. There is a world outside to catch up with, because we’ve slowed down so much. Some people switch their phones back on when they get into their cars. Others put theirs back in their bags and still don’t speak. We’ve only just begun to realise what silly, monomaniacal obsessions we think and talk about each day, so we make resolutions to listen. We leave the Chan hall and the door closes, with its sign intact: ‘Noble silence please’.

  SCREEN DUMPS

  ‘I met this guy,’ Bianca told Ally late one night as she was driving. They always talked in Bianca’s car when it was on the move. ‘I’ve been chatting to him for a while now. He’s really keen on me,’ she said.

  ‘What’s his name?’ Ally asked.

  ‘Mike. He’s pretty serious about me.’ She mentioned how Mike had an American accent and what a turn-on that was for her.

  The summer before she met Bianca, Ally and her cousins caught flies in plastic bags. Once they caught forty-seven in an afternoon, and tied the bag up. When the early-evening winds were blowing, they let the bag go up with the breeze. They watched it for a while, and then went back inside. Then one day Bianca showed up on her doorstep. She was the only one from primary school who kept coming back.

  It was strange – despite how long they’d been together, their private griefs had never been shared: the death of Ally’s grandmother, the death of Bianca’s pets. And until recently, the ending of their romantic relationships. Grieving is like falling in love backwards, wrote an American poet who also happened to be an undertaker. Falling in love, for the both of them, was a very private matter. Then one day – they had no idea how it came about – they grew up. They were no longer living with their parents, but still within fifteen kilometres of each other. Bianca would pick Ally up in her car and take her on long drives to the 24-hour Kmart.

  A week later, Bianca told Ally about her first date with Mike. They had watched a movie together. She showed Ally a picture of herself from that evening. Her face was aglow, not from special lighting, but from the presence of the person at the other end of the camera. Bianca and Mike could not kiss, but they soon began to see each other every day. They left each other messages on their mobile phones. ‘He sings songs to me while I get ready for work,’ Bianca said. ‘I wake up to him in the morning saying, “Good morning, baby, time to get up.”’

  Bianca showed Ally a photo of him on her mobile phone. He was a young man with a smile and a goatee.

  After a couple of weeks, Bianca told Ally that Mike wanted to meet her. Bianca asked her to come over after work. First Bianca drove her to Coles to buy some frozen dinners. ‘Don’t worry, he’ll be there waiting for me when I get home. He always is.’

  They went upstairs to Bianca’s room. Bianca turned on the computer. ‘Hello, Mike,’ Ally said, waving at the screen.

  It must have been very early in the morning for him in the States. He had put on a white shirt with blue hatches. ‘Hi.’ He gave her a little wave.

  ‘How’s life in Alabama?’

  ‘Not bad. Not bad. I’m doin’ alright.’

  They chatted effortlessly and even joked around a bit. Somehow, he seemed more real and three-dimensional than some men Ally had dated, who would sit opposite her at a table in a restaurant and deliver a tally of all their successes, and measure the weight of her worth like human calculators.

  Hooking up their computer cameras, Bianca and Mike had more movie dates. They would turn on their televisions and DVD players and put on the same film to watch at exactly the same time. The computer camera was always positioned at an angle so that the eyes appeared large and luminous in the head, and the chin smaller. Bianca’s lamp was carefully positioned so as to give off a nice glow. Bianca taught Ally all about screen dumps, which was taking a still picture of someone while they were on camera, but which sounded to Ally like taking a crap or breaking up. Of course she never told Bianca this. She did not want to jinx their burgeoning relationship.

  Bianca and Mike did the things that normal couples do. He slept with her, in that he would go to sleep on webcam, and so would she, and they would leave their computer cameras focused on their faces all night so that if one of them should ever wake up it would be to the face of the other. They would eat dinner together in front of their computers so they could have a meal at the same time, even if that meant Mike would have to have his dinner twice because of the time difference. And they fought, in that they would write frenetic messages to each other on Messenger and through email, and sometimes they would get on camera to say things to each other as well.

  Bianca not only let Ally read through their online conversations, she wanted her to. ‘Now, it doesn’t matter if you believe in a higher power or not, fate is testing the two of us,’ wrote Mike. ‘If we can stand the test of time and hold firm even in the centre of doubt, then together you and I will be able to overcome any obstacle.’ Ally felt like an emotional voyeur, and was sceptical about Mike’s words. How easy it was to let loose with lines of flattery, of sentiment; and what temporary joy they bought before habitual feelings of doubt would seep in again. But then Mike was there all the time, during all hours of the morning and evening. Every time Bianca switched on the computer, he would be there, keen as a labrador, wagging his tail at the sight of her face. And now every time Ally came to visit Bianca, his face would be behind the camera staring back at them, interjecting in their conversations with funny quips or remarks. Pretty soon he became a presence in both their lives. He was always around, but the beauty of it was that he was not an obtrusive boyfriend. Always genial, always conversational, but never physically annoying. Easily switched on or off.

  ‘He always gets a bit down when I close the cams after he falls asleep,’ Bianca said, ‘because he likes waking up to see me sleeping.’ But seeing someone on the screen – albeit all the time – was not the same as a real flesh-and-blood human, Bianca told her.

  But then Bianca spoke about the days without make-up, and the day when Mike stood before her in his boxers. ‘I feel so fat and ugly,’ Bianca had told him, and he said to her, ‘I’ve got something to show you.’ He turned around slowly so that every angle was visible to the camera. ‘This is me.’ The rawest insecurities that they had each been incubating were slaughtered with every kind word, every motion of acceptance. The parentheses of her hips were beautiful to him. ‘I love bigger women,’ he told her, which made Bianca cry. Slowly and steadily, Bianca began walking tall. She held her chin up, went from mollusc to butterfly. She went for a job interview and got the job.

  ‘Been nursing a sick rat,’ Bianca wrote to him one Sunday. Bianca kept two pet rats in her tiny room in Coburg for company, because the landlords did not allow tenants to keep dogs. She brought her rats grainy treats from pet stores, and they had a little wheel in their cage. She changed their newspaper every day. She would also pay over a hundred dollars for their medical treatment if they fell sick, and drive alone around the darkened night streets for hours and hours on end when one of them died. Sometimes she would stop at KFC and buy herself something to assuage the grief.

  Bianca told Mike that s
he was taking care of her rat, Ebony, with knowledge she’d gained from an animal nursing course at TAFE. She hadn’t finished the course because that year her mother had decided to kick her out of home.

  ‘Is it working?’ he asked.

  ‘A little … she’s not well though, she can’t control her bladder, she’s shaking, losing weight, just sluggish. When I get home, for the past three days I’ve put her in my jacket pocket to give her my body warmth and have the heater on a little bit towards me … She fell asleep in my hoodie pocket tonite. Wanna see something cute?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Okay, look.’

  ‘Awwww.’ He could see the tail peeking out from Bianca’s pocket.

  ‘I feel like a kangaroo with a pouch.’

  The next evening, Ebony was dead. Bianca turned on the computer, and sure enough Mike was there waiting up for her.

  ‘Wanna see how I found her?’ she typed.

  ‘Alright, show me.’

  She positioned the camera so it faced the rat cage.

  ‘She died in her sleep,’ he reassured her.

  ‘Your eyes always get red and puffy when you cry,’ he wrote. ‘It’s like they’re allergic to tears.’

  He was quite poetic at times without realising it.

  ‘Did Riley get to school yet?’ Bianca would ask Mike in the mornings. Riley was Mike’s six-year-old son. Bianca once went to Playtime and won him a whole set of cartoon character plush figurines. She also sent flash cards to help Riley with his spelling and learning.

  ‘Yeah, I woke up, got him dressed, got him his meds, and got him on the bus.’

  ‘Riley really shouldn’t be on meds,’ she wrote back to him. ‘He’s too young.’