The Healing Party (7 page)

The group clapped and called out, ‘Alleluia'. Maria saw me peeping through the glass doors. I rolled my eyes. She smiled.

Geoff was getting so excited now that his jowls were shaking. His watery eyes bulged. ‘Satan hates Paul Chan. He friggin' well does. When the devil sees Paul coming, he says, “Fair suck of the sauce bottle, eh! Not Paul Chan! Aaarrrgghhh!”' Geoff jumped backwards, with his hands shielding his face. Everyone laughed. Dad shook his head and beamed.

Mum called me to help her in the bathroom. When I returned, I continued to watch. Geoff had left, the furniture had been cleared aside and the drama class had begun. Dad stood in front of the staircase. All eyes were on him. ‘And now … I will teach you the theatre of Kabuki,' he said. ‘We will use the Kabuki technique for our performance at the healing party. What is Kabuki?' He paused. ‘Watch!'

By now, all age and weariness had vanished. Dad bristled with energy. He crouched, ready to spring. His head jerked forward, his neck stretched out, long and sinewy. He pierced the audience with his eyes. His arms shot up towards the sky as though they were being pulled. He dragged each arm down, fell to his knees, clasped his hands together, opened his mouth wide and wailed. The long, pained cry grew louder until it was a scream. He stopped abruptly. He moved into crouching position again, his head and neck strained forward. His eyes searched from one end of the group to the other. Then he repeated all the same moves. When the sequence was complete, he started again from the beginning. He did this again and again, each time with more anguish. Spittle fell from his mouth. Tears rolled down his face. His face turned red, then crimson, now purple. I could hardly bear to look at him, but I was riveted.

He stood upright and pushed his hair back. ‘This is the theatre of Kabuki,' he said, his voice hoarse, ‘where you repeat and repeat and repeat. Until you feel the agony. Until you feel you can't take it anymore. Until you become the agony and the ecstasy!' He bowed. Everyone broke into cheers and applause.

‘Okay. Now you try it. I will call this exercise the three stages of worldly ecstasy. Remember, take two or three movements and repeat and repeat. Stage one: you are on cloud nine. You have got that promotion, won that prize you were fighting for. You've met the man or woman of your dreams. Or you are on a heroin high. How do you act? Let the show begin!'

One by one they started to move. Soon there was a lot of reaching into the air, thumping, jumping and crazy laughter. With a manic expression on her face, Maria fell to her knees and prostrated herself. A man punched his chest over and over again. Two boys wrestled each other. The homeless man pulled up a chair, sat and looked around, nodding. A tall thin woman pranced around like a horse and called out, ‘Money, money.' Even as they performed, they kept their eyes on their director.

Dad responded to each of their movements, bounded from one person to another, filled the room. ‘Keep going. Keep going!' he shouted. ‘Now, the ecstasy has worn thin, you are starting to search,' he said and started to stumble in his step. ‘Search everyone, search!'

Maria groped with arms outstretched. A young woman flung out her arms and jerked from side to side like a robot. The boy with the crew-cut lifted up the cushions on our couch and looked underneath.

‘Now you see the pathos of life.' Dad hung his head. Slowly he raised it again, gazing into the distance with a deep mournful stare. He bayed like a bear. ‘Now moan, everyone!' he shouted. Maria did not hesitate, others joined in and then they were all moaning and groaning. On and on it went until the sound was a bath of human warmth and suffering, filling ears, choking throats and drowning the senses.

‘Stop!' Dad yelled. ‘Everyone quiet. Now just listen to Bridie.' He turned to the pink-faced young woman whom he had been giving extra attention to. ‘Moan,' he told her. She pulled back the hair that had fallen around her face and breathed in, concentrating hard. Sweet, high sighs came from her lips. ‘More breath,' Dad commanded. ‘Open your mouth!' Her lips parted, and she started to moan. Her cheeks went from pink to a hot crimson. ‘More breath! From deep inside you!' he urged. She breathed in and out, each breath deeper, her shoulders and breasts heaving. ‘More!' Dad shouted. With each moan, she became more loud and guttural, her body shook and her mouth hung open. ‘Beautiful,' Dad whispered.

I kicked the glass door hard so they would hear. ‘Mum, are you ready for the chemotherapy?' I shouted. Everyone turned. I moved away from the door and went to her bedroom.

Mum's hair was pinned up, her face pale and powdered and her lipstick subdued. She wore a black skirt and a blouse with a bow-tie neck – a modest outfit she had often worn to church to give out holy communion. I imagined how she might have thought through what to wear for chemotherapy. It was too weighty an event to wear casuals, it was not a social occasion and it was not work … church wear seemed right.

I picked up Mum's bags. We waited at the lounge room door for Maria. Dad stopped in the middle of directing the next exercise and signalled for us to come over. He took the wheelchair handles and pushed Mum into the centre of the room. He gestured for a chair. One was placed next to Mum. Dad sat beside her, taking her hand in his. Mum gave a wistful smile.

‘Come closer, everyone. Please, we need your prayers,' Dad said.

They encircled her, those closest laying a hand on her head, shoulder or arm. Those in the outer circle held the person in front of them, and all reached towards Mum, the focus of all that radiant energy. I stood apart. Maria saw me, gripped my arm and pulled me closer until I could feel their heat, hear their breathing and smell the perfume and the sweat from their exertions.

Dad waited for the group to settle. ‘Dear Lord, we praise you for your healing of Irene,' he said. ‘Today Irene will be undergoing chemotherapy, man's medicine. Why should Irene subject herself to the needles, the chemicals coursing through her veins, the administrations of mere men when you, the divine healer, have touched her? Why?' He paused and looked around at his faithful team. ‘Because the Lord God is so great, yet so full of humility and love for mankind, that He stands back and will not interfere with man's work. The Lord will do His work and man will do his. And the Lord will bless man's work where it is good. All we need to do is to ask Him.'

Dad's voice rose in pitch. ‘So we pray, O Lord, that this chemotherapy will be your holy water flowing through Irene and part of your healing plan. May man's work be part of your greater glory! We visualise Irene fully cleansed of the cancer, her body fresh, glowing and vital.' He was charged up from the drama session. Now he shouted, ‘We claim the miracle!' A shiver of electricity shot through us.

Cries of ‘Amen!' ‘Praise the Lord!' ‘Yes, Jesus, alleluia, praise you, Jesus!' came from the group. Some started praising in tongues. It began as a cacophony. Then Maria picked up a guitar and strummed some chords and the tongues slid into tune. When the tongues quietened, Dad started to sing, ‘In the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus, we have the victory!' Everybody joined in.

Still singing, Dad released the brake on the wheelchair. He pushed Mum out the door and towards the car. The group followed, singing, some skipping, some dancing, surrounding the car as we helped Mum in. We slammed the doors. Inside Maria's small Toyota, we wound down the windows and looked up at their joyfilled faces. Maria started the engine, but we could hardly hear it above the fervent shouts of the victory song. We pulled out of the driveway, laughing and waving.

On the road, the drama group left behind, Mum, Maria and I continued to sing. Our voices now sounded thin and lonely. When the grey block of hospital buildings came in sight, Mum stopped singing. By the time the car was parked, we were silent. Mum was not listening when I took her wheelchair out and asked whether she needed her coat.

The lift doors closed. We were taken up to the ninth-floor waiting room, where it was quiet and the air was cool and bitter-smelling. Maria and I sat on either side of Mum and waited for the chemotherapy mixture to be prepared. Maria handed Mum a
Women's Weekly
magazine, which she held shut on her lap. A well-dressed Greek couple sitting on the opposite bench smiled at us, then looked away. I wondered if we looked as vulnerable as they did. I guessed that it was the man who had the cancer from the solicitous way the woman had her arm around his shoulder. Maria stood up to get a cup of water for Mum from the dispenser and offered to get one for them too, although they already had paper cups in front of them. They politely declined and Maria followed up with, ‘Been here before? My mum is here for chemotherapy.' They did not want to talk. I shook my head at Maria and silently pleaded with her not to start evangelising.

A nurse came up to the woman and said, ‘Are you ready, Mrs Bakas?' I realised it was she who had the cancer. As they walked off, they smiled kindly at us and said good luck.

Another nurse led us into a ward partitioned by white curtains and directed Mum to sit in a grey reclining armchair. A steel hook hovered next to the chair, hanging from a tall metal frame. From compartments in her trolley, the nurse pulled out a fluid-filled tube, needle and swabs.

‘Can you please give me the butterfly needle?' Mum asked. ‘You know the baby needle – it's very thin?'

‘You're Chinese, aren't you,' the nurse said in a loud voice. ‘We often get that request from Chinese on account of your thin veins. Don't worry. I've got another needle here that will do just as well.'

‘Doctor Richards recommended the baby needle for her,' I said.

‘The last time they couldn't get the needle in until we got the baby needle,' Maria said.

The nurse ripped open a sachet. ‘Listen, for blood tests we can use the baby needle, but for drips we use a different needle.'

‘Okay,' Mum said quietly.

The nurse took her arm. She shook her head when she saw the bruises from previous needles. ‘You've been in the wars, Mrs Chan. You poor dear.' She took Mum's other arm. ‘I see they had a go at this one too. We'll have to try somewhere else.' She picked up Mum's hand and traced her finger on the back of her wrist. ‘They're hiding. Here's one!'

She pulled on the plastic gloves. ‘Don't worry, I'm a pro,' she said. She slapped the back of Mum's hand a few times, then repeatedly flicked her finger at the spot until we could see the faintest, thin blue outline of a vein appear. ‘Just a pinprick,' she said, and slipped the needle in. No blood. Mum's eyes were trained on the spot. The nurse manoeuvred the needle around under the skin. Mum's face screwed up with pain.

‘Shoot, I hate it when the veins wiggle away,' the nurse said. She pulled out the needle. She pierced again, moved it in deeper, to the left, to the right. ‘I'm sorry,' she kept saying. She tried a new needle. Again she fished around with it under her skin.

‘Are you all right, Mum?' I said. She did not answer. She was white, stiff, hardly breathing.

‘Take deep breaths, Mum,' Maria said. ‘Let's pray to Jesus.' She massaged Mum's forehead.

‘This is my last go,' the nurse said, ‘and then it's another nurse's turn.' The nurse pierced Mum's hand where it was already darkened by a bruise. Bit by bit she moved the needle under the skin and then held it. A slow dark-red trickle filled the thin tube.

‘Thank you, God!' Mum said.

The nurse hung a plastic pouch of clear liquid on the hook and connected it to the tube in Mum's wrist. We watched the pouch release its poison, drip by drip. Each clear bead formed until it broke with its own weight and fell down the tube.

‘How are you feeling, Mum?' I asked. ‘Does it hurt?'

‘No,' she said, ‘it only feels cold.' She stared at the liquid slide down the tube and enter her vein. For a moment, she screwed her eyes shut and we were silent. Then tossing her head, she opened her eyes again. ‘Maria, get me my rosary beads. And stop hunching, will you? Sit up straight.' Maria handed the beads to Mum. Mum put the crucifix to her mouth and kissed it. ‘Let's say the rosary. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit' – she made the sign of the cross – ‘we offer the first decade to baby Vincent with you in heaven. We pray Maria will find a good husband and Natasha will find you, Jesus.' I wondered whether Mum had thoughts of death and was thinking about seeing Vincent again in heaven. He was born two years after Anita, and lived only for a few hours because of a malformed kidney. There was no photo of him.

We proceeded through five decades of Hail Marys in hushed but insistent voices. During the final prayer, the drip started beeping. A nurse came to change the pouch. ‘Don't stop on my account,' she said, so we continued.

‘O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to heaven, especially those who have most need of your mercy.'

Maria tried to arrange Mum's seat so she could lie back, but Mum would have none of it. Her eyes were glazed and tense. She wanted to talk. ‘We called him Vincent after my father. Because my father was a very good man. A very good man. They are now in heaven together. Your dad was very disappointed. Of course we wanted a son. One thing we did that was very bad, Jesus forgive us, we took the herbs the
wu
gave us
.
That witch said it would give us a boy,' Mum strained forward in the seat. ‘Such rubbish. Your dad changed after the baby boy died. That's why he became modern, no good. You should have seen how terrible he was before the Charismatic.
Tsk tsk tsk
.' She shook her head.

‘Do you really think it's because you lost Vincent?' I said. ‘I thought there were issues before that.'

‘Don't be silly. How do you know? You weren't even born. Anyway,' – she lifted up the hand without the drip – ‘Jesus will heal me to help Dad. And also to bring Natasha to Him.'