The Healing Party (3 page)

He stood up, now directing his talk to us. ‘God has put it on my heart that we must hold a healing party. At this healing party, Father Lachlan will lay his hands on Mum and she will be healed. This party will be the manifestation of our faith. All and sundry will be invited so that they may witness the miracle. We are to start planning for the party immediately!'

*

It was time for night prayers. We moved to the family room. Maria handed me a guitar. ‘Do you still play?' she said. I tuned the guitar while she lit two long white candles and four small scented ones on the family altar and turned out the lights. We sang, ‘Come back to me with all your heart/ Don't let fear keep us apart.' By the time we reached the chorus, ‘Long have I waited for your coming/ Home to me and living/ Deeply our new life,' I was in tears, grateful to be hidden by the darkness and drowned out by the singing. We sang more hymns, each more appealing than the last, and then Dad led us in tongues. Together the incoherent sounds and minor key made the most beautiful discordant song.

For the next part of the prayers, we went around the circle, each taking turns to say a prayer out loud. In the past I would say ‘Pass' when it was my turn, but this time, like my sisters before me, I prayed aloud for Mum to be healed. In the flickering light of the candles, I saw Mum looking peaceful and elated. Song and love flowed through my family. God was with us and everything would be all right. Dad called out, ‘The fragrance of oranges. Do you all smell it – the fruit of healing?' And we did.

*

That first night, I shoved my feet into sheets and mattress so cold they felt damp. I kicked my legs to warm up and when I stopped, I could no longer move. Too overwhelmed to go over scenes and review the day in my head, I gave in and sank into deep sleep.

The sound of voices woke me. They were coming through the wall. For a moment I thought I was a child again, lying in the dark listening to my parents in the next room. When their voices were raised and angry, I would feel a terrible anxiety. In the middle of the night, when you are woken, anything can seem a catastrophe.

Sometimes I heard them after they had returned from a party or a dinner. The floor would creak, lights would be turned on and off, and as they walked past my bedroom I could smell Mum's perfume, and sometimes cigarette smoke or odours from the restaurant they had been to. When they entered their bedroom and closed the door, Mum's voice would start, low and complaining. She would continue for some time until Dad interjected angrily. Occasionally I could make out the words, ‘Always so jealous! Do you want to destroy me?' Once I heard him stomping around, shouting out crazily, ‘I will shoot you!'

When the voices were calm, I would feel comforted and fall back asleep to their mumblings, as if to a lullaby. It was lovely when they shared a joke or recounted a funny incident. Mum would say, ‘
Ho suwey!
How absurd!' as they both laughed. Occasionally, after they had become born-again Christians, they would sing a favourite hymn together and the tune would vibrate through the wall, warming my whole being.

This time, however, even before I was sufficiently awake to make out what the voices were saying, an uneasiness gnawed at my stomach. Mum's voice was unintelligible but insistent. Then I heard Dad's voice, urgent, cajoling. I pulled the blankets away from around my ears and quietened my breathing. Mum's words were now audible. ‘How can I sleep with this pain! I can't stand it!' She let out a slow, wounded moan. The suffering in her voice made me sit upright.

Then Dad started to pray, drowning her out. ‘You are healed, Irene … By the blood of Jesus!' I heard more praying, and he said loudly, ‘We reject you, Satan!'

I rose from the bed. The floorboards creaked, sending a crack resonating up the walls and through to the roof. Moving down the corridor, I tiptoed onto the tiles in the bathroom and ran the cold tap. The noise of the pipes cranking up and the water flowing seemed amplified. I rinsed and filled a glass with water. For a few minutes I stood outside their bedroom door with the glass of water, unsure whether to knock. Not a sound could be heard from their room now. I rested the weight of my head against their door and closed my eyes. Eventually, I poured the water down the bathroom sink and returned to bed.

The voices started again, this time calmer. Then Mum and Dad were singing in tongues. When the singing ceased, there was silence for a time, before I heard first his and then her snoring, almost indistinguishable in their low rumbling.

I turned on my side and pulled up the blankets ready to go back to sleep, but an image of Bonnie sleeping in bed face down, bush of hair over the pillow, legs squeezed together and body straight as a pin, came to me. A cold sweat broke over my body. The breath was strangled out of me. The fear had come back; perhaps it had always been with me. Or waiting here in this room. There was no reason for it. I tried to speak in tongues – ‘
Unay unay astinor, umbala meshala asti usha
…' It didn't work. Something terrible was about to happen.

I threw back the blankets and jumped out of bed with my hand outstretched for the light switch. The light hurt, but I kept my eyes open. I stood with my back against the wall, getting my breath back, and scanned the beds, the wardrobe, the clothes that I'd left lying on the floor, making sure that things were as they should be.

When Patsy and I shared this room, I would shake her awake and squeeze into her bed. She would roll on her side towards the wall but put her hand behind her for me to hold. I listened to her breathing. If it became heavy, I would call out, poke and even pinch her, to make her stay awake with me until the terror passed. She would murmur, half-asleep, ‘Yep, okay,' and never became angry, even though I was the big sister and should have been looking after her.

After half an hour, I was calm but still wide awake. I pulled out from a deep pocket of my backpack the book Jason had given me before I left Darwin. The title dominated the cover. In black capital letters on a plain grey background were the words
On Death and Dying
. I told myself I would have to cover it in brown paper and hide it.

The interviews with terminally ill patients were detailed and real. Too real. After a few pages, my mind wandered off to thoughts of Jason. On our last night together we rode our bicycles the long way to the Thai restaurant, curving around the foreshore, following the fiery red horizon line. We stopped by the bottle shop on the way and Jason bought a bottle of white wine for me and a six-pack of VB and a bottle of Scotch for himself. He drank every night, but Friday night, with the working week over, was the big one.

He said he wanted to take me to the airport the next morning, but I told him I hated awkward, drawn-out goodbyes at airports. We knew it was our last night and although we ordered our favourite dishes, we had no appetite for them. I drank one glass of wine, he drank the rest of the bottle and then the VBs while we smoked and looked around us and at each other.

We went to my house after dinner. I started to climb the stairs ahead of Jason, but he caught me around the waist and held onto me from behind. Nuzzling his face into the back of my neck, he caressed my breasts. Then he reached down with one hand and slid his fingers inside the front of my pants. I swung around and he kissed me, grasping me to him. His mouth and tongue were urgent and stinking of alcohol.

I wrenched away. ‘Fuck off.'

He looked as if he had been struck.

‘Sorry,' I said, ‘it's just that it doesn't feel right tonight.'

He ran down the stairs, grabbed his bicycle and, instead of using the path, dragged it over the bushy undergrowth of the garden. I followed him, holding my bare arms against my sides to avoid the sharp spines on the twisted straps of the pandanus trees.

‘Shit!' Jason shouted as he pulled his arm back from a pandanus. His ugly tone irritated me. The skin of his upper arm was bluish in the moonlight and it oozed a thin line of dark blood.

When he reached the road, he straightened his bicycle and I thought he was going to ride away without saying goodbye. But he turned around. ‘I'm sorry,' he said.

For a long time we held each other tight. My last sight of him was his long back loping from side to side as he forced down the pedals.

I put the
Death and Dying
book down, lay back on my bed and closed my eyes. I imagined I had taken his hand and led him back up the stairs. I was slippery and swollen now and beautiful to touch. As my spine began to arch and my toes began to curl, as I drew in deep and stopped breathing, I saw Jason's sweet face, his guarded eyes and crooked nose, and the hurt that suddenly softened his eyes.

O
N WEEKDAY MORNINGS FROM 7 A.M. TILL 9 A.M.
, a carer from Red Cross was scheduled to come to help Mum. Anita, who had made the arrangements, told me how difficult it had been to find a good carer – the first one failed to show up after two days, and the second one couldn't follow even simple instructions. However, Mum was happy with Rosa, who now had the job. Dad would open the door for Rosa when she arrived in the morning and stay in his studio until she left. I stayed out of the way too, hiding in my room.

A few days after my arrival, Mum called me into the bathroom, wanting me to learn the correct way to lift her. Rosa stood next to her in the cramped space between the toilet and the shower. The room was still damp from Dad's shower. Rosa was curly-haired and middle-aged, her box-shaped body wrapped in a Red Cross uniform.

‘Hello, my darling. So you're the daughter from Darwin.' She grabbed my shoulders and scanned my face. Looking over to Mum, she said, ‘Your daughter has bigger nostrils and lips and her face is wider, but still she has some of her mother's good looks.'

‘You mean her mother's used-to-be good looks,' Mum said. ‘Too long ago now.' She waved a graceful hand at the distant past. It usually annoyed me when people commented that Mum was prettier than her daughters, but this time I was pleased. Poking out from under the frilled hem of her pink cotton nightgown, Mum's thin legs looked cold.

Rosa picked up the wet bathmat from the floor and hung it over the towel rail. There was barely enough room in the bathroom for Mum's wheelchair to sit next to the toilet and Rosa to stand next to her, so I watched from the doorway.

Rosa manoeuvred the wheelchair so that it was almost touching the toilet. ‘I will teach you my way to lift,' she said. ‘Don't ask me if it's the doctor's way – it's my way. Many people say do it like this or do it like that. But look, I do it my way and it's been working for over twenty years. You are lucky your mum is light and never complains.' She planted a sneakered foot on each side of the wheelchair so that she was facing Mum.

‘Sorry, my darling, do you mind if I use you?' she said to Mum. Mum shuffled her body forward to the edge of the chair and Rosa placed her arms under Mum's shoulders. ‘You join your arms around her back so you have a good hold. It's like you are hugging each other. Then you bend your knees. Make sure you use the muscles in your legs and your stomach and lift —'

Mum suddenly pulled away, thumping against the wheelchair's backrest. ‘Wait!' Mum cried. ‘Close the door, Natasha. Close it! Close it!' Squeezing into the bathroom, I grabbed the door and pulled it shut.

‘Always your mum says, close the door, close the door!' Rosa said. ‘It's okay, Irene. He's your husband. You should see how my husband sees me – curlers in my hair, fat, no teeth. So what? He still loves me. If not, that's his problem! Bye-bye to him.' She laughed.

Mum's face was closed and her eyes hard. Rosa stopped laughing. ‘Never mind, darling. Just remember, you are always gorgeous.'

On a count of three, Rosa hoisted Mum to her feet. Mum clung to Rosa, helpless legs scrabbling. Together they shuffled towards the toilet, locked in a bent and desperate dance. The blue floor tiles, covered in mist, glistened treacherously. One slip and there would be no mercy from the shower ledge or the sharp corner of the vanity bench. With the side of her head pressed against Rosa's bust, Mum watched me watching her. I forced myself not to look away.

Grunting, Rosa lowered Mum's weight onto the toilet seat. Only when Mum had found her balance did Rosa release her. Mum pulled back her shoulders, fixed her hair, smoothed down her nightgown and turned to me.

‘So, have you got it, Natasha? You know how it works?' she said, her head held at a stiff angle. I nodded. ‘Okay,' she said. ‘Go and have your breakfast.'

I left, closing the door behind me as Rosa struggled to pull the nightgown out from under Mum without letting its hem fall into the toilet bowl.

*

Rosa's shift finished. Having showered, dressed, eaten breakfast and taken her medicine, Mum was exhausted. Dad helped her onto the sofa in the lounge room and sat beside her. With their heads bowed, they prayed the rosary. When Mum called me to join them, I said I would pray with them while I finished washing up. I pushed open the bi-fold doors so I could see them from the kitchen. Dad, fingering the baby-blue plastic beads, led the incantation. Mum responded softly.
The first joyous mystery … hail Mary … blessed are the fruit … at the hour of our death …
They were phrases that I knew well enough to chant without pause or thought. Disjointed, floating from a distance, the words had an added beauty. Dad's dark skin was pale in the cool grey light and his restless eyes were shut. Mum's body in its stillness, in respite, was graceful. I was reminded of photos of them from when they were young. They had been introduced in church; Dad was a recent convert from Buddhism, in the days before he went wild – or, as Mum put it, before he became modern.

When the rosary was over, Dad laid his right hand first on each of Mum's legs, then on her abdomen. Dipping his finger into a small jar of blessed oil, he drew the sign of the cross on her forehead. He kept his hand on her head and quietly prayed in tongues.

I attended to the dishes in the sink and when I turned back to look at Mum and Dad, they were talking in serious tones. They remained on the sofa, but their heads were turned away from each other, Mum rubbing her sore abdomen. As I drew closer, I heard them talking about the healing party.

Mum was insisting that the guests be limited to thirty. Dad disagreed. ‘Open up the doors to everyone,' he was saying. ‘It must be a party like no other we have ever had.'

‘Don't be absurd! How can everyone fit?' Mum said.

‘If they are spilling out into the street, all the more glory to God. Alleluia!'

She touched her throat. ‘Then we give them only tea and biscuits.'

‘No, Irene, we must be generous. We are doing this for the Lord. There must be plenty of good food. Make everyone happy.'

‘We can't do this.'

‘We must show God's love, Irene.'

‘Okay – the Australian way. Everybody has to bring a plate of food to share.'

‘How can you calculate when the Lord has promised a miracle at this party?'

Mum looked away, frowning. In the past, she would have jumped to her feet. ‘Aiya, don't show off, how absurd, everyone brings a plate, it's understood,' she would have argued, until, as usual, Dad won. I anxiously anticipated the quarrel to come.

Dad loved to hold parties. It seemed we held a hundred of them in the house on the top of the hill in Hong Kong, where we lived for two years from when I was seven. One side of the hill was dominated by houses and roads, the other side was darkened by deep, dense jungle. Our house was flanked by a grand expanse of lawn that was regularly clipped by a gardener to stop the jungle's encroachment.

The double-storey colonial house was a mansion compared with the narrow shophouses in crowded streets that we usually rented. Although the rent was cheap, it had been vacant for a long time. Dad found out why soon after we moved in: the lawn that had so impressed us had been a burial site for Japanese soldiers during the Second World War. We lived there with a constant feeling of unease – my sisters and I feared walking on the lawn or even entering a bathroom alone. But we stayed on at the house on the hill for the parties. By folding back the French doors that stretched across two sides of the house, we opened up the ground-floor living area to the lawn and the hum, screech and chatter of the jungle. On party nights that lawn, strewn with lanterns casting flickering shadows, could have been a shimmering sea.

Patsy and I would position ourselves between the living room and kitchen. Double doors like those in a Western saloon separated the two rooms and swung back and forth with a
whoomph
as the women pushed through, carrying trays stacked with smoking beef satay, glistening noodles, yellow chicken curry and fragrant roast duck. After the food, Dad would gather everyone on the lawn and Mum would be dragged out of the kitchen. The two of them would stand in front of the guests, the reigning monarchs, the most glamorous of couples. Dad, in a multi-coloured silk shirt, sweat shining on his forehead, teeth showing, would start with a speech in which he simultaneously entertained and inspired, congratulated and challenged his guests. While the guests were still shaking their heads at his brilliance, he would sing a cheeky song or perform a mime specially selected for the night. Next up, he would introduce the party games. This was the part where we saw adults acting like children. Afterwards there would be more food, and then dancing that went on and on until Patsy and I could take no more. We lay on the couch that had been pushed against the wall to make room for the dancing, and before we knew it we would find ourselves being carried up to bed by Agnes.

Agnes was only sixteen, a year younger than Anita, when she came to us from the orphanage as a live-in servant. Patsy and I loved her – she wasn't like the other servants who averted their eyes and helped silently when called and then disappeared. Her skinny arms would wrap around me and I'd hear a whispered
Why you so fat, Nat?
in my ear.
Alamak!
she would cry, hoisting me up. Then
boom, boom
– I would feel each step she took up the stairs, jiggling and rocking to the music with me in her arms.

After we moved to Melbourne when I was eleven, Dad continued to hold parties. Inspecting the house in Aquarius Court for the first time, Dad stood in the large lounge room and saw how it opened up into the kitchen and the family room; he imagined the space thronging with guests, and his mind was made up.

But parties in Australia were not what he expected. I remembered the night he and Mum attended their first Australian party, held by a photographer colleague of Dad's. They left dressed to the nines, excited and carrying a plate of cakes. They returned early that night, hungry and appalled. My sisters and I gathered around Dad to hear about the party. ‘No food except a few pathetic bowls of cold chips and crackers … No games … No dancing … Just loud music and people drinking their beer!' Dad could not bring himself to tell the whole of it. Later we learnt about the shameful incident. Dad and Mum had waited to be offered at least a drink, but there was nothing being served. The guests were helping themselves to drinks from a big bin filled with ice. So Dad reached for a bottle but a man called out loudly in front of the other guests, ‘Mate, that's mine. Didn't you bring your own? You know, BYO? Aussie for bring
your own
!'

Dad vowed to show the Australians how to hold a party. He invited all his workmates, clients and photographic models. Mum cooked for weeks in advance, and we bought a large freezer just to store the prepared dishes. My sisters and I were the kitchen hands. On the night of the party, the guests, eyes greedy, filled up their plates from two tables laden with hot Chinese dishes, and came back once, twice and even three times for more. After the meal, Dad made a speech, sang a Hakka folksong and invited guests to come up and perform. When no one came forward, he introduced a new game he had made up to mark our first party in Australia. He called it ‘Hula-Hula Aussies'. We moved all the furniture aside and the fifty guests sat on the carpeted floor in a large circle. Spinning around in the middle of the circle, Dad explained the game. A grass skirt he had been given as a visiting artist in Hawaii would be passed around while the music played. As soon as the music stopped, the person left holding the skirt had to stand in the middle of the circle, pull on the skirt and do a hula dance. Dad gave a demonstration, wiggling and hamming it up to laughter and wolf-whistles. He called Mum up to demonstrate the swaying hips and rotating pelvis for the women, but, always modest, she refused. Before the party, Dad had instructed me on how to operate the CD player. I would sit next to him, and when he secretly pushed his foot against mine, I was to stop the music. I wondered if anyone else noticed how the music kept stopping every time the skirt reached the hands of a pretty woman.

After we became born-again Christians, we continued with the parties. Instead of games, however, we had dances, songs and acts put on in praise of the Lord. Everybody loved our parties, but they never saw what we, especially Mum, had to go through to hold them. Mum and Dad always had their worst quarrels beforehand. Mum suffered a week of nerves and non-stop cooking. Dad would chide her, ‘Be generous, show people a good time.' Mum would snort, ‘You just want to show off.'

This time, however, Mum did not seem able to put up a fight. She rubbed her rosary beads on the woollen skirt stretching over her distended abdomen and closed her eyes. Dad continued in a gentle but insistent voice. ‘The healing party is our chance to witness to the people. The Lord has promised to heal you. Let this party bring the unbelievers to Him!' Sitting forward on the couch, Dad turned to her, one knee almost touching the ground. ‘Say yes, Irene.'

Mum's head tilted to one side. For a moment I imagined how they must have looked when he proposed to her. ‘Yes, Boon Chin, we must witness for the Lord,' she said.

‘Praise the Lord,' Dad said. They talked some more until Dad climbed the stairs to his studio.

I went into the lounge room once he left. ‘You don't have to have a big party if you don't want to,' I said to Mum. ‘A small party will be just right. Do whatever
you
feel comfortable with. Don't let anyone bully you into anything.'

‘What are you talking about? Your dad is not a bully.'

‘I didn't say he was.'

Her hand fluttered around her throat. ‘It is not nice to talk like that. We will have a good party. Don't worry.'

*

Later that day, when Mum had woken from her afternoon nap and Dad had gone out to meet with Geoff Atkins, I looked for an opportunity to talk to Mum.