The Healing Party (8 page)

The drip beeped. The nurse came in, chatting with Mum while changing the bag. She told Mum it would be another hour or two and she should try to rest.

Once, in front of a bonfire in our backyard, when I was twelve years old, Patsy and I had heard Dad shout out his sins to God. After being baptised in the Holy Spirit, he had rampaged through the house. He grabbed CDs, books, pictures, fabrics, an antique vase with a dragon painted on it, anything that the demon could use against us, and threw them in the fire. Mum was out, or she would have salvaged some of our possessions. He prayed out loud to the sky, he asked for forgiveness. At one point he fell to his knees and sobbed, ‘Irene and I were newlyweds. But still I went to that woman. Every time I came to her door, she said to me, “You've got the Devil in you, Paul
.
” But I couldn't stop. “You've got the devil in you.” I renounce her words! In the name of Jesus, I reject Satan!' he shouted over the roar of the fire.

‘Try to sleep, Mum.' Maria stood behind her rubbing her shoulders. Mum closed her eyes but kept opening them again to look at the clear drops sliding down the tube.

‘Do you want to do some meditation?' I asked.

‘What type?' Mum said. ‘Don't tell me you do all those bad Buddha, Hindu things.'

‘No, this is Christian meditation,' I lied. I had learnt the meditation at a ten-day Vipassana retreat with a Buddhist monk. The words could be adapted so they referred to Jesus, I thought.

I asked Mum to sit straight and relaxed and to hold her palms open to Jesus. Maria sat on the floor and crossed her legs. I made my voice slow and resonant. ‘Sit comfortably and concentrate on your breathing. Breathe Jesus in and breathe the illness out,' I said. ‘Feel the air passing through your nostrils and passing out again. Focus only on the air moving in and out, until you are fully aware of your breath.' I reminded Mum to breathe out of her nose, not her mouth. After a few minutes, Mum's and Maria's breathing slowed to a gentle rhythm. ‘Now focus on relaxing each part of your body. Start from the crown of your head and move slowly down your spine.' I talked us through each part of the body.

In silence, in my mind, I visualised the cancer in Mum's body. I made myself imagine the tumour on her spinal column below her neck, three centimetres wide, the doctor had said, compressing the nerves. I imagined the growth a lurid green. I imagined the hateful lumps in her liver and in her bowels. I saw the sickly fluid collecting in her abdomen, making her belly bloat.
Stop … Don't loathe it, don't fear it
, I told myself.
It will grow if you do that. Just see it and imagine it dissolve, dissipate, leave.

I forced myself back, shook my body and opened my eyes. ‘Imagine the medicine going into Mum's vein as the healing power of Jesus flowing through her,' I said fervidly. ‘Cleanse away the bad cells and strengthen the good cells. Visualise the medicine of God's healing as a shining purple light, the colour of healing.'

‘Good, Natasha. Enough,' Mum said. ‘Now you two go and eat your lunch. I'm going to rest.'

*

We walked out to the waiting room.

‘That was really good, Natasha. Where did you learn it?' Maria said.

‘I did a meditation course. I adapted it to be Christian.'

‘You sounded like Dad.'

I looked at Maria to see what she meant by this. Her face was innocent. She left me in the waiting room to go to the toilet.

Lying on the table next to the magazines was a stack of pamphlets. I picked them up. The blue pamphlet said
Choose Life
,
Choose Jesus
above a picture of a baby in a womb. The other pamphlets were information about the Charismatic renewal.

When she came back, I waved the pamphlets at her. ‘You can't put these here, Maria.'

‘Oh, sorry, they must have fallen out of my bag.' She wouldn't meet my eye.

‘That's what you said in Darwin when I found your pamphlets on the reception table at my work!'

‘I really didn't realise. There are so many things in my bag.' She took the pamphlets from me and walked quickly towards the lifts.

I ran to catch up with her but she went faster. What was the use anyway? In Darwin I had tried to make her admit the truth about the pamphlets, and when I'd finally got through to her enough to make her upset, she turned around and said, ‘You think I'm a loser, don't you, but I'd be much worse without God.'

The lift doors opened and it was Dad. ‘Ha ha!' he said, beaming, and patted our shoulders. ‘How is she? I made the drama group leave early so I could come as soon as possible. The chemo went well?'

‘She's fine. One hour to go,' Maria said.

‘Thank God. Praise the Lord. Same room?' he said.

‘Yes,' said Maria.

‘She's resting,' I said. ‘We're just going down to the café to get a coffee.'

‘Yes. Good girls. You must have something to eat and drink.'

*

When Maria and I returned from the café, Anita was standing at the reception desk, talking to the nurse.

‘So, let me clarify. The drugs that we got after the first session of chemotherapy need to be discontinued and replaced with these ones. Is that correct?' She wore a suit I had not seen before. The nurse was giving Anita her full attention.

When she had finished with the nurse, Anita walked with us towards Mum's room. ‘The traffic from the city to here was terrible. How's Mum? How did it go? Did they do better with the needle this time?' she said.

‘They couldn't use the butterfly needle,' Maria said.

‘What? How many stabs?'

‘About five,' I said.

‘Unbelievable! I told you to make sure she got the butterfly needle!' She strode back to the desk. We could hear the nurse repeat the explanation she had given us. ‘That is not what Doctor Richards told me,' Anita said. ‘We will certainly take this up with him.'
Clack
,
clack
,
clack
, her heels came back towards us.

Anita, Maria and I walked into the room. Mum was lying back. Dad had pulled up his chair alongside hers. He sat with his head inclined towards her serene face. One hand held hers. Lost to the world, mouths slack, they snored in tune. The fluid continued to drip down the tube into Mum's vein.

‘Ohhh, aren't they cute?' Maria whispered. She started to giggle.

‘Shhhhh,' I said, and started giggling too.

‘What are you both laughing about!' Anita said.

Soon the three of us were laughing so hard we had to run out of the room.

F
OR THE FIRST WEEK AFTER THE CHEMOTHERAPY
, Mum was nauseous and weak. Still, she made sure we held to a strict morning routine. At 7 a.m. each day she rose – her face grey, her eyes dull and her lips pronouncing faith in the miracle.

I had taken over from the morning carers. By the time I entered Mum and Dad's room, Dad would be up and eating breakfast in the kitchen or working in his studio. I would pull away the bed-clothes, raise Mum to a sitting position and help her shift onto the wheelchair and into the bathroom. She was careful to choose clothes that were easy to wear but kept her looking trim and fresh. The steps for ablution, hygiene, dressing and grooming followed an order from which she would allow no deviation. By 9.30 a.m. I was ready to tidy and air the bedroom and bathroom, prepare breakfast and lay out her medication for the day. It was important to have the orderly start, because from there on she struggled to stay awake and keep track of the day. Each vomit was a minor catharsis. Her body, which was so passive and feeble, would lurch forward with a violent energy. This happened about six times a day at first. She moved between lying on the couch and lying in bed, the bucket beside her still wet from being washed out after its last use.

After the first week she stayed awake longer and ate without vomiting. I wanted to tempt her with her favourite foods but had to ask her what these were.

‘Fry some noodles for your dad,' she replied.

‘But what do
you
want to eat? What are your favourite foods?'

She pursed her lips. ‘My favourite foods …' she said, concentrating and trying to oblige. ‘Anything,' she eventually said. ‘I like anything, la.'

We all knew Dad's favourites. He loved fried noodles glistening with black soya sauce and oil. They had to be the broad type of rice noodle, covered in gravy with fleshy prawns and slivers of pork. Or else yellow curry chicken, so deeply cooked, he said, that you could chew into the bones and marrow.
Char siu,
sweet, salty red barbequed pork, must be moist inside and a little burnt on the outside. Since coming to Australia, he also loved ‘finger lickin' good' Kentucky Fried Chicken. He couldn't stand the way Australians put beans or corn in savoury foods – they were for dessert, cooked in sweet coconut milk. And lamb, he said, smelt like human armpit.

Soon after I arrived, Mum asked me to cook Dad's noodles each day for his lunch. ‘Very easy,' Dad said. ‘Just cook fast –
shah, shah, shah
.' He flung his arms around as though handling a spatula and wok over a fire, then spread out his hands. ‘Done!'

It wasn't easy. Each ingredient had to be thinly sliced, marinated and fried separately before being mixed together at the end with the noodles. ‘No, no, no,' Mum cried when she saw me poking into the rice noodles with the steel spatula. ‘You will break them up!' She showed me how to dig down and hard into the wok and then lift in one swift motion. I copied her a few times and it was only when I shoved with my elbow behind it and the spatula scraped loudly, steel against steel, that she said, ‘That's it. You must hear it.'

Since replacing the carer, I grew resentful of having to cook Dad's lunch every day when there were so many other tasks to do. He was always appreciative, however, and ate everything. I also found myself cleaning up after him and climbing the stairs to bring cups of tea and other things he might call out for. Dad was the kind of man who had to be served. We all knew that. Now we had to make up for Mum being ill. He sensed, however, that I would not massage his neck and shoulders as Maria and Patsy did, and never asked me to do this.

One day, while preparing dinner with Anita, I complained about having to make Dad's lunch. She said nothing to me, but fifteen minutes later, as Dad was walking through the kitchen to the family room, she stopped him.

‘Dad, you can't have Natasha cooking lunch for you every day when she's so busy with Mum,' she told him. I overheard her while washing the dishes, too mortified to say anything.

‘What are you talking about? Everyone is busy,' Dad replied.

‘Make yourself sandwiches or have leftovers for lunch,' she said.

‘Nobody asked her to cook for me,' Dad said, miffed.

I rushed towards him. ‘It's okay, Dad, I don't mind cooking.'

‘No big deal. I can go to the Chu anytime.' He waved his hand dismissively and left the kitchen.

I turned to Anita. ‘Why did you have to say that?'

‘Don't complain if you're not going to do anything about it,' she said.

‘It was not for you to say anything.' My voice shook.

‘He'll get over it. What are you getting so upset for?'

A familiar feeling pickled in my stomach. I wanted to run after him and beg forgiveness. Even though he told people he had the most marvellous children in the world, I always disappointed him. I did not praise and admire him, support his drama group, devote myself to selling and promoting his artwork, or follow his beliefs. I didn't even want to cook his lunch!

After this incident, Anita started to bring noodles and other dishes for Dad when she came over. She put a number of his favourites in the freezer for me to thaw out and heat for him. She was always looking after him even while she was telling him off for something. She was like Mum in that way. However, Anita never seemed to talk with him unless it was for practical reasons and most of the time would avoid even looking at him. In fact, among my sisters and even me, she seemed the only one whom Dad couldn't reach with his charm.

My sisters came over every day, flocking in like angels to Mum. If there was time before they arrived, Mum and I would meditate using the method I had started in the hospital. As she gained more energy, she would tolerate some of my questions about her life. Mostly she asked me to read aloud or listen to a preacher on a CD with her.

Dad worked in his studio, held drama rehearsals, prayed with Geoff and his cell group, and made arrangements for the healing party. Every day he went to mass. Sometimes he ate lunch elsewhere. He and Mum often sat together on the sofa in the lounge room, praying, reading or talking, and sometimes napping together. Each evening the family gathered for prayers.

The first three weeks in Melbourne, I had continually been communicating with Jason in my head, wondering what he was doing, and how he would respond to the things I was experiencing. I could still feel him next to me – his shy sideways glances, his overheated body. But now I was beginning to think about him less. We still spoke on the phone every day, but the conversations had become increasingly distant and frustrating. Sometimes I felt we were on different planets.

My world had narrowed to my parents' home and the local supermarket, the care and cooking routines, the prayers and meditation, and my daily attempts to get Mum to talk to me about her life. The healing party loomed before us. My head felt woolly, my thoughts and reactions seemed at a remove. Sometimes I forgot to eat. My whole body had slowed down, had become contained.

*

After I had been in Melbourne for four weeks, Dad came running down from his studio. ‘Good news, good news, Irene!' he called out. ‘Anita's property colleagues are going to buy the triptych of tigers for 6000 dollars. It will pay for the healing party. Praise the Lord.'

They rejoiced. It was proof that Jesus wanted the party to go ahead. Mum's smile was like the sun coming out. ‘We must celebrate,' Dad said. ‘We must invite Geoff and Father Lachlan to a slap-up meal with all the family!'

That Saturday afternoon we piled into the Holden: Dad and Mum in front, and Maria, Patsy and me in the back. Within ten minutes, we were at the commercial centre of our suburb. Brown brick shops with faded signs – Milk Bar, Sunny Boy, Normans Newsagent – lined both sides of a six-lane highway, full of trucks and noise, even on a Saturday afternoon. Among the functional row of shops was one small piece of red and gold exotica, the Ting Chu Chinese Restaurant, or ‘the Chu'. When we had first moved to Melbourne, the Chu was the only Chinese restaurant in this part of the eastern suburbs. The Cheahs, who owned the restaurant, had been the only other Chinese people for miles around. People assumed we were related. While my schoolfriends got casual jobs at the supermarket, my sisters and I waitressed at the Chu. Children at school teased us, saying we put cat food in the dim sims. I would have taken all the waitressing shifts that clashed with prayer meetings to avoid going to them, but my father made me alternate with my sisters.

Mr Cheah's daughter, who now managed the restaurant, held the entrance door open for us. Hanging in the windows were the same golden lanterns and red polyester curtains that my sisters and I would brush the dust off once a fortnight when we worked here. We walked past the front counter and the handful of people sitting against the wall waiting for takeaway. I imagined I saw Bonnie sitting there, waiting for my shift to finish.

Anita, Charles and Will, Father Lachlan, and Geoff Atkins and his wife had already arrived. They sat at a big, round table near the back of the overly large and empty room. Only two other tables were occupied by diners. Covering the back wall from floor to ceiling was a faded wallpaper print, in traditional brush-painting style, of a misty mountain Chinese landscape. I was glad it was still there – I loved its sometimes soaring, sometimes meandering lines and the luminous spaces.

Father Lachlan and Geoff and his wife rose from their seats to greet us. Father Lachlan, stooping from his great height, took our hands in turn and looked into each of our faces as though he really saw us. He had big hands and a broad, deeply furrowed face. Seeing his beatific smile and hearing his brimming-over voice, I remembered why I liked him. He still led the Saint Mark's Charismatic meetings that we had attended every Tuesday night for years. He was almost my parents' age but had a shyness about him that made him look younger. People would gather in their coats in that cold church, and were soon warmed by his rejoicing and his singing in tongues. Father Lachlan was one of a few Catholic priests who had embraced the renewal, and the only one to lead a Charismatic prayer group.

It was the first time I had met Doris, Geoff's wife. She was poised and upright, and almost a head taller than Geoff.

Dad, directing everyone to seats around the table, positioned Mum's wheelchair next to Doris. Pride of place went to Father Lachlan, flanked by Dad on one side and Geoff on the other. ‘Father, Father, these girls have not heard your wonderful testimony,' he said.

‘And which testimony is that, Paul?' said Father Lachlan.

‘How you came to the Lord. You know. You were stationed as a missionary priest in Bogota, sickened by the corruption and mindless suffering. One evening, questioning the existence of God, you reached for the
Playboy
magazine that another disillusioned priest had left in a drawer, but grabbed a bible instead —'

‘Well, Paul,' Father Lachlan said, taking up the story, ‘the gist of it is, Jesus spoke to me through a message in the bible. It was a verse from James: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.” Count it all joy,' he said. ‘I love that.' Laughter and joy trembled in his voice.

For some minutes, the men bantered about the verse, bright and jovial. Geoff caught me looking at them. ‘We've not properly met you before, young lady. You're the one from Darwin, aren't you?' He pointed at me across the table. ‘There's just one thing I need to know. Do you love Jesus?' Geoff leant over and held a pretend microphone to my face. Dad chuckled.

‘Oh yes, she does,' Mum said. ‘Don't you, Natasha!'

I nodded, but didn't smile.

‘Don't worry about him, darling,' Doris said. ‘He's a josher! What an inspirational family you all are.' Geoff and Doris were smartly dressed, Doris in a linen day suit. I felt embarrassed that the restaurant was not more grand.

‘Look at all these gorgeous daughters,' Geoff said. ‘You'll be fighting off the blokes, heh heh! And look at the young fellow. He's a little prophet Samuel in the making, aintcha?' Geoff poked his head towards Will. Will turned down his mouth, folded his arms and swung his back to him. I felt like doing the same. ‘Praise the Lord for this blessed family!' Geoff clapped his hands.

‘We must order! Call for anything you like. Father, Geoff, Doris?' Dad said.

‘I'll have Peking duck,' said Geoff.

My sisters and I exchanged a look – there was no such thing here.

‘Okay,' said Dad, ‘it's not on the menu – but let's ask Mrs Cheah to cook it specially for us. I'm sure she will.'

‘No, Dad. For a start you have to have a duck,' said Anita. ‘Sorry, Geoff, no duck, we know the menu well. We used to waitress here. What else do you like? They do good pork.'

‘Yes! Forget the quack quack and let's have some oink oink!' said Geoff.

Dad laughed, and the conversation continued in this vein until the first course started to arrive. The waiter plonked down on the lazy susan the Chu's jumbo spring rolls, each one thick and long enough to cover a dinner plate.

‘Before we start on this feast,' Dad said, ‘I want to thank you, Jesus, for sending Father, Geoff and Doris to share our table. Bless us, O Lord, at this pre-miracle meal; it is the celebration to precede the main celebration – the healing of Irene. Father, please say grace.'

‘Bless this meal we are about to receive through your bountifulness, O Lord.' Father Lachlan closed his eyes and opened his hands. ‘We praise you, Jesus, for this wonderful, loving and faithful family, the Chans. We lift up Irene, your devoted daughter, especially to you in prayer. We ask for joy and readiness for Thy will to be done.'

‘Amen.' Everybody now began to eat.

‘Eat more, Father! You must build up your strength for the night of nights coming up. Once they witness the miracle, hundreds more will be lining up for healing,' Dad said.