The Healing Party (16 page)

Car lights turned into the court and stopped at the house. I ran back. It was Ed's car. He double-parked and opened the door. ‘Anyone for chicken?' he said, grinning. The spicy aroma hit me before I saw the red and white stripes. Buckets of KFC filled the car. His happy laughter grated on me.

‘Did my father tell you to do this?'

‘He
asked
me to,' said Ed. His face tightened. ‘What's wrong?'

‘We've slaved over the cooking for weeks, and then he sends you out to get a carload of chicken! Stay away from Anita. I'll go and talk to her before you start bringing it in.'

I ran inside and called Anita out of the kitchen. ‘That's it!' she cried. ‘No more! Unbelievable! Dad didn't even have the decency to tell me!' Her nostrils flared. She paced up and down, threw off her apron and gloves. ‘We might as well start chucking out the rest of the food we cooked, because it won't get eaten now.'

The guests, oblivious to what was happening in the kitchen, went for the KFC buckets as soon as they were laid out on the tables. Even the leaders dipped their hands into the buckets and could not wait to sink their teeth into the oily, battered pieces of chicken.

Mum still sat in her corner next to the sofa. Her face was grey, her eyes bloodshot. By now her smile was so strained that it looked like a grimace. I tried to pull her away to rest, but she asked me to get her another codeine. ‘Must trust in Jesus,' she said.

Father Lachlan arrived. The crowd spontaneously broke into applause. He was loved for his rich, laughing voice, his melodious tongues and shining face. With a natural, understated charisma, he bent down gently and smiled and greeted people. Dad and Geoff immediately led him up the stairs to the studio.

We gave up our plan of having the performances in the living area, as the 250 or more guests could not squeeze in there. Instead, the volunteers shepherded them outside. People crammed into the yard and driveway. ‘Sit down on the ground,' they were told. The guests folded to the ground in a lovely synchronous moment. A pool of faces glowed in the dark.

Maria and the drama group assembled against the back fence in front of the ramp. It was the perfect spot. The remaining cacti made for a monolithic backdrop, and the ramp, lined with fairy lights, looked like a runway to the night sky.

Dad hopped up onto the ramp and welcomed the people. He had his stage face on – glittering, darting eyes, too-big mouth and too-loud laugh. ‘You were chosen to be here tonight, from the lowliest of you, like myself' – he bowed and waited for the laughter to stop – ‘to our esteemed leaders' – he pointed to Lara and the leaders, whom he had insisted should sit at the front. Then he paused dramatically. ‘The Lord has put it on my heart that I must share with you this song, “I Believe”, a song of profound wisdom and faith.' Each verse began with the words ‘I believe'. The first declarations were of belief in nature and the life force. As the notes rose and the tempo quickened, the declarations turned to belief in goodness and a God who will show the way even in the darkest night. Each profession of belief became bolder than the next, until the climax, when a state of belief was all that mattered. The song finished with just the two words ‘I believe!' Though I had heard Dad sing the song at least twenty times, I was still astounded by the emotion he poured into it. Starting in a throaty whisper, he built up the volume with each verse. His mouth opened wider, his head started to vibrate … then he was in the throes of passion, belting out the lyrics, throwing up his arms. With the final ‘I believe', his voice broke and he was left gasping.

An actress from CTJ came forward to hug him. When he had composed himself, he introduced the drama group with exuberant and emotional praise. They took their places. In Act 1, the characters stumbled in confusion, in Act 2 they howled with pain, and in the final act they danced and sang with joy. Their overacting was strangely apt and moving in the night air.

Dad called Geoff, Father Lachlan and Mum to the stage. How Mum kept the smile on her face, I could not say. Though wrapped in a coat and a blanket, she was pale and cold. She could not move, wriggle and rouse up warmth like the rest of us. Not a shimmer of her blue cheongsam could be seen under the woollen layers. No trace remained, except for her over-bright smile, of the glamorous hostess who had stood next to Dad at earlier parties. She should not have been out in this cold night, below an uncaring sky, next to thoughtless men, in front of a waiting audience. I yearned to get up from where I sat, just three metres from her, take off the wheelchair brakes and whizz her away from there, into bed, and help her get warm.

‘This night was prophesied,' Dad shouted. ‘Two months ago, Father Lachlan, Geoff and I gathered in His name to pray for a young lady with child – that she would choose life and not abortion. The young lady did not show up. For a reason. The Lord Jesus wanted to send us a message. Suddenly Geoff prophesied: it is Irene who must choose life. Everyone is given the choice of life over death. Not just to choose life for a baby, but to choose your own life. Irene has chosen life. Irene will be healed, so that we can proclaim this message.'

And the guests cried out, ‘Alleluia, praise the Lord!'

‘Now if that wasn't enough, the bountiful Lord sent Irene a dream to confirm the miracle. In the dream, a light shone upon her, causing her to rise up and walk, run out into this very backyard and jump over this fence. To meet Jesus halfway, I made this ramp, to see Irene across! We call it the ramp to salvation. Not bad carpentry, eh!'

‘Alleluia,' they said, and laughed and clapped.

‘Tonight the might of Jesus will be on show. Irene will get up and walk, healed of cancer!'

The crowd broke into tongues. Geoff jumped up and down on the spot, shouting out his tongues. Father Lachlan looked down and frowned. It was the first time I had seen him so serious.

Dad called on him to lead the healing prayer. Father Lachlan walked over to Mum, turning his back to the audience to face her. Quietly, he asked if she was fine and wanted to be prayed for out here. I couldn't hear Mum's answer. Dad took hold of Father Lachlan's arm and guided him to stand behind Mum. He and Geoff stood on either side of the priest so that the three of them faced the audience. Father Lachlan laid one hand upon Mum's head and raised the other heavenwards.

‘God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,' the priest said, his voice trembling. ‘Look upon your child, Irene. You are the alpha and the omega. You are the mover of mountains. Your ways are higher than our ways. You can bring good out of any situation. All diseases come at your call, and go at your bidding. Heal Irene, if it be Thy will.'

Geoff, standing next to Father Lachlan, stared out at the audience and shook his head vehemently. ‘Give us a minute,' he said, drawing Father Lachlan and Dad to one side. Terry Morris joined them, and the four men talked in a huddle. Tense mutterings rose from the audience. Dad got Patsy to start up a song. Then Father Lachlan shook hands with the other men, bid Mum farewell and was seen out by Dad.

‘Unfortunately Father Lachlan had to leave us for another commitment,' Dad announced when the singing stopped.

Geoff stretched out his hands towards the guests. ‘Blood of Jesus, cover and protect your people. Satan get behind us. We choose life! Do you choose life?'

‘Yes! Amen!' they shouted back.

‘Righty-o, let's get down to business,' said Geoff. He stood in front of Irene. ‘Irene, do you choose life?'

‘Yes,' she said, in as loud a voice as she could muster.

‘Diseases don't come from God, and don't let anybody tell you that. Diseases come from the devil. The Lord is perfect,' said Geoff. He led the crowd into tongues, told them to go louder and higher. Dad, Geoff and the leaders encircled Mum and laid their hands upon her head and shoulders. I could no longer see her.

Suddenly Geoff pushed the others aside and stood in front of Mum. He took her hands and tried to pull her up. Mum's eyes darted from side to side in alarm. Looking uncertain, Dad crossed his arms but didn't intervene. ‘Stand up and walk!' Geoff shouted. ‘In the name of Jesus, stand up and walk!' He yanked at her again.

Anita got to Mum before I did. ‘Irene needs to go inside now,' she said, in a loud, clear voice to the audience. ‘A small group of you can go inside to pray with her, and the rest of you keep on praying outside.' Before Anita could finish speaking, I grabbed the wheelchair handles and pushed Mum towards the house.

Mum wanted to go to the toilet. I pulled off the coat and blanket. Her skin was freezing cold. She was so stiff that I couldn't lift her properly and had to set her back down on the wheelchair. Maria knocked on the door. I let her in and we lifted Mum together. Afterwards we quickly got her into the bedroom. I rubbed her numb feet and Maria brought her a hot cup of tea. Mum asked us to redo her make-up. We did not talk. It was as though we were between acts and getting ready to go back on.

Anita moved between rooms and outside, managing things. Lara Morris could be heard from the backyard, leading the guests in prayer, and Patsy kept the music going.

Geoff, Dad, Ed, Terry and a handful of others were waiting for Mum in the family room. Dad positioned Mum in the centre of the family room. Again, they circled her, laid their hands on her head and prayed. Then Dad and Geoff, taking Mum under each arm, pulled her to her feet. She floundered.

‘Come on, Irene, step out in faith. Try to take a few steps and God will do the rest,' Dad said. Mum jerked one leg forward, but as soon as Dad and Geoff tried to release her weight, she began to fall. They sat her down. They prayed some more, denounced the devil, called upon the Holy Spirit, and shouted out their tongues.

‘Yes, we will claim the miracle!' Geoff shouted, dragging her up again. Four or five more times they pulled her up and exhorted her to walk. Each time we would see the spastic flailing of her legs as she tried. Her face was dull, expressionless, closed down, all her energy spent on persevering.

It was almost midnight and people were leaving. Some left by the side door without saying goodbye. Others came through to the family room to take their leave of Mum and Dad. By now the leaders had left and no more singing and praying came from the backyard. The departing guests trooped past, their faces greasy with KFC.

Geoff knelt down in a corner of the family room and seemed to pray silently. After a minute, he bounced up and announced that the Lord had told him to slay Irene in the spirit. He told Ed to take one side of Mum while Dad held her other side. Ed tried to catch my eye, but I would not look at him. Geoff pulled the wheelchair away to one side. He stood in front of Mum and laid both his hands on her head. He spoke in tongues, then shouted, ‘In the name of Jesus, you are healed!' He pushed Mum's head back, and Dad and Ed lowered her to the floor.

‘Now Irene is on God's operation table. Leave her there, and let the Lord do his work,' Geoff said. She lay on the carpet, pitiful and twisted. Dad arranged her legs, straightened her back and put a cushion under her head. Ed took off his leather jacket and placed it over her. Now she looked better, but I couldn't bear for her to sleep with all of us looking at her.

I went out to the backyard. It was abandoned, except for Patsy and her music ministry packing up in the back corner. Paper plates, glasses, chicken bones and a shawl were strewn across the lawn. The night sky was still cloudy and the light it reflected back was dirty.

Back inside, Anita, Charles, Maria and a few volunteers trawled through the rooms with big plastic garbage bags. They picked through the tables, which were piled high with crushed KFC cardboard, empty bottles, trays half full of cold curry puffs and wontons piled on top of each other, used plates and cups and stinking bones.

‘Just throw it all away!' Anita said. ‘What a waste.'

Dad called us all into the family room. ‘It's time to wake Irene up,' he said. He knelt on the carpet beside her and shook her shoulder. ‘Irene, Irene, wake up, praise the Lord. You are healed.' Her eyes opened and for a moment, between waking and consciousness, before her mask of endurance could reassemble, I thought I saw something there. For a split second, her eyes were soft and lit with hope.

Tears came to my eyes. I tried to force them away and to control my breathing, but that caused me to gulp.

‘Who's crying?' Mum said, looking around until she found me. ‘No need to cry,' she said, in that scolding, maternal way of hers.

‘Sorry,' I said, and rushed out of the room into my bedroom.

Anita followed me. Her face was trembling and her mouth curled in a horrible snarl. ‘You spoilt brat! You're always so selfish!' she spat. ‘You think it's all about you, don't you?' She stormed out, slamming the door.

I knew I had to go back there. I steadied my breathing and walked back into the family room. The family, Ed and the remaining volunteers were saying their final prayer. They held hands in a circle. Mum was back in her wheelchair and part of the circle. Dad, undeniably tired, declared, ‘It is done. Irene is healed, and we proclaim its manifestation.'

Geoff suddenly did a ludicrous jump into the middle of the circle. He kicked his legs in the air. ‘Hooray! She's healed. Irene is healed. Thank you, Jesus! Alleluia!'

Expressionless, Mum repeated, ‘Thank you, Jesus.'

Then we all sang, ‘Rejoice in the Lord/ I see the miracle.'

I
T TOOK ONLY A COUPLE OF DAYS TO RE-ESTABLISH A
Routine. As usual, I rose before the sun was up and headed out to the oval. My fear of the dark had gone, pushed out by nasty, seething thoughts. They kept me on edge, even in my sleep, burning my belly, waking me with dreams of violence.

There were no trees or birds here. I laughed, breaking the silence on the oval. It was a hard, bitter laugh, more like a strangled cough. I was thinking of the way I could pull up past incidents at will and get angry and feed on them as though they happened only yesterday. Resentments that I had struggled to keep at bay since coming home were rushing back, one after another.

My thoughts returned to the house on the hill in Hong Kong and the moment Agnes had been expelled. I could see it all as I had when I was nine – Agnes in the simple cotton shift that she wore to mop the floors; a young Mum and teenage Anita shouting at her to leave, pushing her down the stairs; Agnes resisting, clinging to the banister; Mum and Anita tearing at Agnes, ripping her dress open at the back, exposing her bra, peeling her arms off the banister, pushing her cringing, howling form out the door. ‘Stop it! Why, why?' Maria, Patsy and I had wailed.

Dad, Mum and Anita would never speak about it. And where was Dad on that day? I flicked through the images in my mind – he definitely wasn't there during the commotion. But his presence pervaded this memory.

How many laps of the oval had I done? I had no idea – I had not even felt my legs moving. I kept on walking.

My mind drifted to another time, when I was about twelve years old, after we had become Charismatic. I had gone shopping with my parents. The shopping centre was a steel and glass barn rising out of a vast black-tarmac car park. It was a hot, crowded day, just before Christmas. The air vent in our car blew hard and noisy, but its wind was tepid. Row after row of parking spaces were taken. We had joined the line of cars circling, desperate for a spot. A shopper pushed her trolley towards a car. The car in front of us stopped to wait for her to load her bags into the boot and vacate the spot. We were stuck. ‘Praise the Lord!' Dad said, in the way that you might say shit or damn. From the back seat, I saw Dad's brown forearm sizzling in the sun and his hand tapping on the steering wheel. I felt anxious for him.

Suddenly Dad pointed at a car reversing in the next parking lane on our left. ‘See the car leaving that spot?' he said to Mum. ‘Go and stand there and reserve it until I can move from here.'

‘No, la, Boon Chin, we can't do that,' she said.

‘All you have to do is explain it's reserved. Go on,' he commanded. ‘Now! Before it's too late!'

Again she resisted. ‘Not right, cannot, la.'

I remembered thinking,
Why can't Mum just do what Dad says, why does she have to be so incompetent?
‘I'll do it!' I said, and got out of the car.

‘Good girl,' Dad said. Mum told me to get back in the car. When I refused, she followed me out.

Seconds after we reached the vacant spot, a black four-wheel drive with a gleaming steel bull bar pulled up. The driver blared his horn. Mum pushed me back and stepped forward herself. She gave a shy wave and tried to smile at the man behind the windscreen. Through the tinted glass, we could only make out his silhouette. ‘Sorry,' she called out, ‘it's reserved.'

The man stuck his head out the window. He was square faced and fair haired, with black Raybans and a mean-looking mouth. ‘Move, you fuckin' Chink, or I'll run you over,' he shouted. He jerked the car forward, halting inches from her.

Mum's legs trembled on her high heels. She didn't move. I heard the gear change and he let the car go. The bull bar hit her thighs with a thud. Mum fell backwards.

Scrambling to her feet, she limped away, dazed, pulling me with her. Dad wasn't in the lane where he had left us. Mum crouched between two parked cars and put her face in her hands. Then she lifted her skirt. An angry red swelling appeared above her knees. I couldn't bear to see it. I started looking for Dad's car. There he was, pulling into a vacant spot in a lane closer to the shops. Mum pulled herself up again and limped towards Dad. ‘Wait till he sees what happened,' she hissed.

‘It's not Dad's fault. You could have moved before he ran you over!' I said. She flung out her hand and struck me across the cheek and ear.

I fed on that slap for months afterwards. I would relive the shock of it, the humiliation, the injustice. Alone, I gloated with such intensity that tears of resentment towards my mother would fill my eyes. Later, my focus shifted, but not to the ugly, aggressive man who had struck Mum with his car. His evil was of a kind beyond my range. My thoughts turned against Dad. I replayed his command to Mum, his urging voice, his ‘Go on. Now!' It was the first time I had realised he made us do things, careless things.

On and on my poisonous thoughts would go. The one who most deserved to be hated was myself. I was a stupid, mean child who did not appreciate my mother. I always took Dad's side and did his bidding. I wished it had been me who had stood in front of the bull bar. I never stuck up for her, never had the courage to say anything to Dad.

*

A thin figure walked towards me from the half dark of the oval. I stopped dead in my tracks. The big hair, the long thin legs. She reminded me of Bonnie. Or perhaps I'd already been thinking about Bonnie before she turned up. The figure came closer. It was a middle-aged woman whose tired features bore scant resemblance to Bonnie's alert eyes and vivacious mouth. Walking past, the woman nodded at me. Tears fell down my face.

Obsessed with the idea that she was getting fat, Bonnie had run laps around this oval every morning when she stayed with us. Bonnie and I had met at a youth Jesus camp when we were both twelve. She was there because a boy she had a crush on was going. I was there because at that time, just a few months after becoming born again, I was a believer. Instantly we bonded. I loved the way she always found something to laugh at. ‘Come deep inside me, Jesus,' some earnest girl would pray out loud, and Bonnie would be off. Her hand would clap over her mouth, her shoulders would shake; she would bend over double, then explode in fits of laughter. She was lithe, long-limbed and funny to my short, stiff and serious.

After the camp, we became close friends. Bonnie thought my family warm and exotic, if a bit weird. She lived with her mother in a commission flat a bus ride away from our place. She would meet me at the Chu after my shift. She didn't like me to visit her flat. ‘It's a dive,' she said.

Bonnie said her mother had her when she was already an old bag. Her father, who she said was funny and handsome, and spoilt her rotten, had left home for work one day when she was nine years old and had never been seen again. She kept his photo in her wallet. Bonnie got her pixie nose and bushy hair from him. ‘I don't blame him for taking off,' she said. ‘I'd do the same if I had to get into bed with that old hag.' Then she'd crack up laughing. A school-friend of Bonnie's told me that her father had been forced to leave by the police for abusing Bonnie and her mother. But Bonnie denied it.

By the age of fifteen I hated going to prayer meetings. Dad would say to me, ‘The spirit of ungratefulness and selfishness is in you. Whether you like it or not now, you will thank me one day that we have claimed you for Jesus Christ.' He forced me to keep attending. None of my friends, not even Bonnie, understood why I couldn't just refuse to go. But Dad's hold on us was absolute. I knew I had to get away from home. I intended to leave as soon as school was over, with the money I had saved up from working at the Chu.

While I did Year 11, Bonnie dropped out of school and got a job as a sales girl at a newsagency. We dreamt about moving to Darwin and sharing a flat after I finished Year 12. We had seen pictures of sandstone pillars rising out of the dust at the Lost City, in Litchfield National Park, and something in its desolate beauty captured our imagination. Then she started going out with Tyrone, a skinhead mechanic with wealthy parents, and we saw less and less of each other.

For about four months we lost touch. But one evening after I had started Year 12, I received a call. ‘Nat, oh Nat, it's so good to hear your voice. I'm sorry I haven't contacted you, I've been so fucked up,' she said, and started to sob. It frightened me. I had never heard her sound like this before.

We met at the oval that night. As she walked towards me, she looked like a model, tall and skinny in high heels and miniskirt, with a big head of hair and her face all made up. But when she drew close, I saw that she was too thin. She clasped me in her bony arms. ‘Sorry, I'm sorry,' she wept. ‘I'm so ashamed to have you see me like this.' Bonnie's eyes were enormous in her skeletal face. She told me that she was bulimic; she was cracking up and had to get away from her insane mother.

I told her I would ask my parents if she could stay with us until she found somewhere else to live.

Mum didn't want Bonnie to stay, but Dad overruled her, saying it was our Christian duty. Bonnie shared my room. Each morning she left for work at 8.15 and returned at 5.45. She held it together for work, but couldn't stop weeping when she came home. Mum did not show Bonnie affection but fed her at mealtimes as though she were one of her own. Dad made up for Mum's lack of affection with his warm attention. He lent Bonnie a camera and praised and instructed her on photography, and encouraged her spiritual growth. It was decided she would stay with us for three months until a place came up in the Christian single women's household.

It was a condition of staying with us that Bonnie came to prayer meetings. At one of these meetings Bonnie was born again in the spirit. Like most of my friends, Bonnie had always admired Dad. Now she thought he was amazing.

But then, seven weeks after she moved in, Bonnie left without a word to anyone. ‘So ungrateful,' Mum said. ‘She didn't even say thank you or goodbye.'

‘Has she fucked off?' screeched her mother, when I rang. I had more luck with the owner of the newsagency, Shirley. Over the year that Bonnie worked there, Shirley had taken a maternal interest in her. She told me that Bonnie had come into work distressed, saying she needed to leave urgently and that she was going to stay with her old boyfriend, who had moved to Mildura. Bonnie left no contact details.

Three months later, Shirley called to say there was a letter. I went to pick it up. Bonnie's writing had been round and flowing, but now it was jagged, and in places the pen had been pushed down so hard that it ripped the paper. The letter was six pages long. She ranted against self-serving governments, violent and abusive husbands and fathers, religious hypocrites, the rich bullies of the world and their plan to round up the weak and poor in ghettos and high-rise commission flats so that they self-destructed. I focused on the few details she gave of her current life. She was working at a pub for an aggressive prick, she needed to give up smoking, she had passed out on the floor while writing the letter and couldn't keep writing now because it was time to leave for work. She was living with a guy who was no good, but not as bad as some. She said about the two of us, ‘Can you see the string connecting us, curling around our necks?' But she left no address.

There was no contact again for another two months, until Shirley informed me she had received a call from Bonnie that seemed to be local.

I decided to visit her mother. At the commission flats the lift enclosed me in its grimy steel walls and took me up to the fifteenth floor. I looked for the numbers on the identical doors along the corridor. Halfway down the corridor, a poster of Bono's latest album was stuck to a door. I ran there, my heart racing. Bonnie had to be home. ‘Bon?' I called out, and knocked. I heard the footsteps, and then the door was flung open and there she was. We laughed with joy to see each other again. She had put on weight, and looked normal. She held me close and buried her face in my hair. I knew her smell. ‘I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' she whispered.

From the front door, I could see Bonnie's mother wearing a large floral dress and sitting on a threadbare armchair. I went inside to greet her. The place smelt of cats. Bonnie's mother levered herself up. ‘Nobody told me you were coming. Want a cup of tea?' she said, snorting.

Bonnie took my hand and pulled me towards the door. ‘No, we're going out.'

We took the lift down and sat on a plastic bench bolted to the ground in the foyer. Bonnie talked, pulling frequently on her cigarette. She had moved back home a week ago but only until she found another job; she and Tyrone were no good together, took too many drugs; Mildura was okay if you liked hicks …

I interrupted her. ‘Why did you leave my parents' home without saying anything to me or anyone?'

She started breathing fast and hard. ‘I didn't want to tell you,' she said. ‘That's why I kept away.' She was suddenly angry. ‘I went up to your father's studio to bring him his coffee. He cracked onto me. I thought he was giving me a hug, but he grabbed my tits and tried to kiss me. I had to push him away.' Her face contorted. ‘It was fucking disgusting. Why do things like this happen to me?'

I knew I should comfort her, but I felt numb. I said nothing.

‘It's not your fault, Nat,' she said. ‘You can't help having a prick of a father. I felt so sorry for your mum. She was just downstairs.'

I started to cry, and then it was Bonnie who comforted me. At last I said I was sorry. ‘What do you want me to do?' I asked.

‘Nothing,' she said. ‘Just tell the evil bastard never to come near me again.'

After prayers that night, Dad went to the studio and I followed him up. I was shaking with fear. ‘Dad, there's something I need to talk with you about,' I heard myself say. My voice sounded unnatural. I had never been the one to raise anything with him. It was always he who did the talking. And now what I had to say was unthinkable. I thought he hadn't heard me. But he put down the photo he was studying and slowly turned around.