Hard Word (2 page)

Miriam

‘What does it look like!' I say, as contemptuously as I can. ‘What does it look like!'

‘What does it look … What does it look like?' they say, straggling after me in a ragged, sheep-like chorus.

‘What does it
look
like!' I say again. And this time I feel my lip actually curl, and they laugh – in shock, hands flying to their mouths. They are not sure this is how we should be behaving.

Us women.

There are fifteen of us in the class, fourteen of them – the four in the front row from Asia and the Middle East, Farida from Afghanistan, Hafize from Turkey, Njala and Samia from Lebanon, all strong women, scarved, vocal, mother-hipped, and beside them, darkest of all, Eleni from Greece, then Maria, their counterweight, from Chile, who sits immediately behind them, her powerful voice and forearms sometimes propelling the entire boat of the class forward, then Renuka, the Sri Lankan, and Shamila, from India, her sari not red today as it normally is but a dense golden wattle, and perched all around them – never in the same order but fluttering from one seat to the next even in the course of a class – six brightly painted miniature birds, six tiny creatures, from Vietnam, from Laos, two miniscule Cambodian girls, shy to the point of extinction, and – most surprising of all in a class of migrants and refugees like this – Yuriko, weightless, from Japan, the skin and flesh of her arms so transparently white that bone and green vein are laid out glowing for all to see as if she was radioactive. And then, of course, there is me, their teacher, their
guru, sensei, maestra, profesora, mudarrisa.
Trying to solicit a single common note from this unruly, polyphonous choir.

‘What …' they ask, singly, overlapping, their unpractised voices flying. ‘What does it look like … ?'

‘It's not really a question,' I tell them. ‘It's not asking for information, or even a response. If you pass a man in the street on a hot day and he is fixing his car, and you ask him what he is doing, and he says,
‘‘What does it look like
!'', he is not asking you to describe a man fixing his car.'

They look at me, then laugh.

‘Do you understand?'

We are practising the idioms they'll meet on the streets – not just reading them or analysing their structure, but using them, acting them out, trying to get inside the feeling, the intention of the words. It's the session where we have most fun. Like now, with Maria, the market woman from Chile, up on her feet. Legs spread, arms akimbo on thick hips, black eyes flashing. She whirls on Yuriko, diminutive, white-face, eyes black too, and filling now with apprehension.

‘What,' Maria spits at her, ‘does it
look
like!'

There is a momentary hush, and then a burst of laughter and clapping.

‘This Maria,' they say.

Yuriko reddens, then smiles, the blood swimming beneath her white skin. A hand goes up again to cover her mouth.

‘Bravo, Maria,' I say. ‘Now, Yuriko, try saying it back to her. Let's pretend Maria has just asked you whether you're upset by her comment. What could you say back to her? Go on, try it.'

‘What …' Yuriko whispers into the already whispering silence. ‘What does it rook rike?'

This time there is a sigh, as soft as Yuriko's own voice. Then: ‘
Ll
-ook,' they say along with her. ‘
Ll
-ook. What does it
lll
-ook
lll
-ike …'

‘
Lll
-ook,' Yuriko repeats, and they nod and smile together.

Towards the end of the class, when we are all exhausted and headachy with these drills, we listen to a story together. Not from a book, but their stories – and mine. They have asked me for mine. This is something I will have to think about. Each week one or perhaps two of them, depending on time, read out the story they have written.

In the beginning, all the stories were short, perfunctory – usually something about a member of their family, their lives at home – but, as we have got to trust one another, they have grown more elaborate, more intimate. The English of these stories is nearly perfect. Between classes, the students work alongside an individual tutor, a TESOL trainee from the local university, who collaborates on their story, helps turn it into grammatical, idiomatic English. The stories become models for their own practice – for reading, for pronunciation, for writing. They fall in love with the English of their stories. They read them over and over until they know them by heart. Some even copy them into specially bound books, keep them under cellophane like photos in a family album.

Today there is time for only one story.

Maria's.

‘For fifteen months …' she begins, and looking up for one long moment, fixes us in our seats with her long, black gaze. ‘I was disappeared …'

‘Disappeared?' someone whispers, but Maria ignores it.

‘This was 1973, and the junta had just taken control. They had murdered Allende by then, they had bombed La Moneda. All those months my family did not know what is happening to me …'

‘What
had
happened to me,' I say.

‘Pardon,' she says. ‘They did not know what
had
happened to me … Whether I was dead or just disappeared. They did not know I was involved, they did not even know about Raul. When the soldados arrested me on the street one night after curfew, all I could think was I must not betray Raul. But I was frightened. How could I keep it hidden from them? When I had heard what they did to people. By that time I already knew I was pregnant.

‘I was driven in a truck to the National Stadium, taken to the cells under the ground there. The corridors were dark and full of bodies, some of them were still moving. I was dragged along the corridor by my hair, all the time being hit in the back and on the legs with a rifle butt. I tried to step over the bodies, but I could not see. I stood on one man, I wanted to say sorry. I must have made some sound, he turned his face up at me. His lips had been torn off. I was thrown into a cell. It was large, there were men in the shadows, three, four. A cloth-bag was put over my head. Each time I reached up to take it off, I was beaten on the arms and hands. Still none of the men had spoken until one of them told me to take my clothes off. ‘‘All,'' he said. ‘‘Hurry,'' he shouted, ‘‘or we'll do it for you.'' In a few minutes I was naked. Before these men. Then they began to shout, all together, questions, curses. They began to beat me, on the head, shoulders, breasts. I kept my arm locked here, over my belly, it was all I could think of doing. I must protect the child, I kept saying over and over in my mind. I must protect the child.

‘After the shouting and the beating and when I still said nothing, I was strapped down to a table and electrical wires were put on my breasts, into my vagina. I did not believe such pain could exist. I must have screamed. They stopped and asked me again. And again I said
no
– it was the only word I could speak, remember. This went on and on. A day, a night. Another day. And then, when I had fainted again, they left. And I could hear the screaming from the cell next door, and for a moment I thought it was still myself. Still me screaming. When I realized it wasn't, I was glad. I had no feeling for the other person. All I knew was that if they were screaming, I was not. When they came back, they took the wires off me, and then they abused me, one after the other. I could feel their hatred, their fear, with every thrust. How they hated us. The sweat and stink of their hatred I will never forget. At one point the bag slipped upwards, and I saw one of their faces. It was someone I knew, a young man, a soldier from one of the barrios near the market where my father had his stall. I had even spoken to him sometimes, said good morning. Now his face, above me, was filled with such hatred, such fear. He spat in my face, ripped the cloth-bag down over it again. Even now, today, I mark his name, that young man, I mark his face. He finished with me, and I knew I was bleeding. He must have noticed as well. ‘‘Pig whore,'' he hissed in my ear. ‘‘Pig whore. You know what we do now?'' he asked. ‘‘You know what we do with this?'' Something scraped over the bag on my face, and I knew it was a knife. “We open you up so you menstruate every day of your life.'' I knew then I would live at least, but I knew the child would already be dead.'

Ohh –

‘But it was not. I was left in the cell, still naked, for two days with only water. I think they must have forgotten me, for when they came next time, it was a different voice I heard, and they sent for a doctor. I was given clothes, a smock. ‘‘Doctor,'' I whispered when he came, ‘‘what of the child?'' Somehow I knew Raul was dead. That is why they had left me alone. ‘‘Perhaps,'' the doctor said.

‘I was sent to a woman's prison north of the city. This was Santiago I am writing about now. I was in a dormitory with fourteen other women, and they saved me. They were beaten bad as I was –'

‘As
badly,'
I remember to say. From a dry mouth.

‘Pardon. As badly as I was. But after two months, when I began to show, they forgot their own pain. They nursed me, gave me extra food. They saved my life, the child's. ‘‘Do not hate,'' they said, ‘‘you must not hate. The child is yours, not theirs.'' They did not know about Raul. I did not tell them. It was the safest thing. ‘‘The child is yours,'' they kept telling me over and over, ‘‘yours, not theirs. Not the Fascists'. It is your child, not theirs.''

‘When the baby was born, we called her Esperanza, for hope. And the cell, even in winter when it was so cold the water froze in the bowls, became a happy place. Even one or two of the guards – the hardest women – found they could not keep up their hatred, their fear of us. They would smuggle hot water through the corridors to us and each morning as the light came up, before the cells were inspected, we would rise with it and all together bathe the child, dry her, wrap her in the few rags we had, pass her between us. Hold her up above our heads so the light from the window reached her face. Esperanza.

‘Eso es todo,
that is all,' Maria said. ‘That is my story.'

‘Is there … is there anyone who … would like to ask Maria a question?'

‘Why?' said Shamila.

‘Why?' Maria repeated after her. ‘Why what?'

‘Why are you here? Where is Esperanza? Where are your grandchildren?'

‘Esperanza went to a convent school,' Maria said. ‘It is the best I could send her. When she is nineteen …'

‘
Was
nineteen, Maria.'

‘When she
was
nineteen, she tells me …'

‘
Told
me.'

‘She told me she has met a man. Who is this man? I ask her. She is vague. I find out. He is the nephew of one of the generals.'

‘Ohh –'

‘I leave Chile the day before her wedding. I live here in Australia now.'

‘Ahh.'

‘This Maria,' they said. And sat, for a moment, breathing, before one of them remembered and they began to clap.

Grandma Vera

Prick Philip. The Greek. Well, he is a prick. The Duke of Something Something. Horse prick. Those head things. My God,
busbies.
Now, how did I ever remember that?

‘Busbies,' I say to Miriam, who is unpacking the tin things on the kitchen thing. ‘Busbies,' I say again. ‘Busbies.'

‘Hmm? Busbies?' says Miriam. She's not looking at me. She's reading the label on one of the things. ‘No, not busbies, Mother.'

‘That's a good idea,' I tell her anyway.

‘Busbies are … well, they're kind of hats, head coverings … you know, like the Queen's guards wear. What do they call them, the Grenadiers, or something. Or the Horse Guards.'

‘Prick Philip,' I say.

‘Mother, please.'

Well, he is a prick, I think to myself.

‘Little people,' Miriam says, ‘have big ears.' She means Katie. Katie is six. We were reading, Katie and me, when Miriam came back from the shops, carbolishing everything. ‘And Philip's not Greek,' Miriam says. ‘You know that.'

‘Katie is six,' I tell her.

‘Yes, Mother, Katie is six. That's quite true,' she says, and sighs.

‘Six.'

‘Don't keep saying that, Mother.' She's banging the lids on the boardcup now as she puts the lid things away.

‘So … ?' she starts to say, and stops. She's angry, she's red with me. ‘What have you two been up to while I've been shopping?'

‘We were reading,' Katie says.

Katie's six. Six.

‘Reading? That's good,' Miriam says. ‘What were you reading?'

‘Well,' Katie says, ‘first we were reading my new picture book …'

‘The horse one?'

‘Yes.'

Six.

‘But now Grandma Vera is just started …'

‘Has just started,' Miriam says.

‘Has just started reading me about Alice and the Queen of Hearts.'

‘Really?' says Miriam. She comes to the the the … place in the wall and looks at us. ‘And what was it about?'

‘Well,' Katie says, ‘the Queen, you know the Queen? Well, she made some tarts, and … here, Grandma Vera,' Katie says, as she puts the the the … thing with words in my lap. ‘Read it out for Mum. Read out the poem. Here,' she points, and I start to read.

 

 

‘That's wonderful,' says Miriam, standing at the place in the wall. Just for one moment I think she has tears in her eyes. She is shaking her head. ‘That's just wonderful.'

‘What's a knave, Grandma?' Katie says.

‘Knave?' I say.

‘In the poem.'

‘Well, he
is
a prick,' I say to Miriam. ‘Always was.'

‘A prick?' says Katie. ‘Prrr-ick.'

Miriam is taking out the lid things again. Banging them on the cupdork. She has her back to us.

‘Prr-ickk!' says Katie.