Eloquent Silence (51 page)

The scene is frozen eternally in the minds of three women, myself and my daughters. I will remember today until my final hour when I remember nothing at all.

Soon my mother comes to the back door in her white nursing uniform, her day’s shift over. Her previous decision was to stand back from the baby boy and leave him to his doting father whose possessiveness towards the male child is intense. Her concentration, she has told me, will be fully on the girls who will be in danger of having to stand aside in favor of the little boy.

Rather stiffly and formally, she asks to hold the infant. Her attitude is a little distant, not her normal happy adoration when she beholds her granddaughters. She does not approve of his father’s preference for the little boy over the little girls, whom she adores. I stand and place the baby boy in her arms. He nestles, smiles in his sleep. Her expression undergoes a remarkable change as she visibly falls in love with him, this boy-child, she who has never had a son of her own.

I look at my family, those whom I love profoundly all there before my eyes—blood of my blood, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. Happiness is too often an episodic emotion. We five are happy at this moment. That’s all that counts. My little girls hug me, kiss their baby brother. They stand apart yet together, waiting to nurse their brother.

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H
e thrives, my baby son, and grows apace. His proud and loving sisters wheel him around the house in a doll’s pram. He folds his arms across his little chest and croons at them. We laugh at him, with him, with one another. He gurgles, kicks, knows that he is the center of attention, the center of our universe in his helplessness.

The three children develop. My mother comes. She takes us places when we are forbidden to leave the house. To the city. To the park. We thank her, bid her goodbye. If the pickup is in the driveway we enter the house with caution, defenseless. If not, we ring her to say that we are safe.

Sometimes we are permitted to love her, sometimes not.

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A
nother year, maybe two. Currently we are not supposed to interact with her, but secretly we do. She is not supposed to visit us, but secretly she does. We all love one another and that is forbidden but enforcement is impossible as we cannot be supervised day and night. Yet we continue to interact in the face of all opposition.

We five go shopping, eat waffles with ice cream and syrup. Go to the movies, to church.

We cry in fear and trembling. What will happen next?

It is 1970. I am twenty-nine. How to live until I am 30? Until I am an old woman wise in the ways of the world? We cannot be visited by the future without being haunted by the past and my past eleven years have alternated between the deep-seated horror of the violence I have lived with and the calmer times of respite that sometimes come in the interim. I have not known complete peace of mind since 1958.

There is a grim irony in this as I think of my gaps in memory brought about by strong medication which leaves me asleep at crucial moments such as watching my little girls perform at Kindergarten. There I sit without awareness, fighting against dozing at inappropriate times when I am supposed to be helping the Kindergarten teacher with her charges.

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T
hen it’s 2002. I press the keypad of the security door at the nursing home and enter. A tiny frail lady sits cuddling a crocheted rug, rocking it like a baby.

‘Good morning, Majella. How are you today?’

‘I’m good today. Fine. I’m going home. Going home. Shirley’s coming for me soon. Then I’ll go home and never come back here.’

‘That’s wonderful. You must be really excited to be going home with Shirley.’

From the far corner come the intermittent cries of a one hundred kilo infant in her seventies. She waves to me, laughing. I greet her.

‘Hi, Beryl. Hi, darling.’

Across the living area my mother sits facing the wall, hands folded in her lap. One hand still wears the sticking plaster from the bite given to her by the nursing home’s pet kelpie three weeks ago. She was ‘wondering aimlessly’ according to the report and may have even tried to sit down near the brown dog, a creature bred to muster farm animals.

Such temerity, to expect to sit down near a ‘pet.’

The next day she had reportedly ‘forgotten the incident.’ Thank God she didn’t ‘wander aimlessly’ near the dog and receive another bite.

So she’s forgotten. Excellent. Cool.

Why wasn’t I informed for six days?

She has lost the power to wage war effectively. I haven’t and will go to battle on her behalf. The dog continued coming to work with his owner until the sister in charge of the ward returned from her days off six days later and informed the Director of Nursing. The dog’s owner thought the residents might miss him, so she continued to bring him. I wonder to myself if he has bitten anyone else who was ‘wandering aimlessly.’

A tetanus needle was administered to my mother after the bite. Daily checks were ordered to monitor for infection. The puncture marks remain three weeks after the ‘nip,’ black scabs on her hand. Some nip. Black scars on her hand? On her brain?

She is in an enclosed ward for safety reasons. In an open ward she may come to harm. I know she is safe here. Such a relief, I must say. Cannot find the right words to express my relief at her perceived safety as I reach out to hold her bandaged hand gently.

‘Hello, Mum. Hi.’

She turns to me. Her face lights instantly.

‘Oh, hello Mum,’ she replies with a smile ear to ear.

Today she does not know my name but she knows my face and she knows we love each other. What else matters? I ask myself as I remember how she used to say my name with love.

‘How are you today?’ I draw a chair near to her and rub the back of her hand softly.

‘My sister. Hello. Not, you know, slippers, want to, wasn’t it? I love you.’

‘Yes, I know my darling. I love you, too. Did you eat your breakfast?’

‘Did I? Must have. The woman, the woman, you know.’

‘Yes, I know. That’s good. You must eat. Did you have a good sleep?’

‘Yes, no. Something cold, wet, hasn’t it? Got to this place not when, you know? I love you so much.”

‘I love you, too, Mum. You know that.’

‘Oh, you poor little soul. How hard. How awful.’

‘It wasn’t too bad, Mum. We all have one another. We wouldn’t have the same precious family if I hadn’t married the man I did.’

‘Must tell you. When...you know him...you know.’

‘Probably, Mum. Most likely I’ve heard about it.’

We sit silently for a while. I hold her hand, the one I held on bitter winter mornings when we brought the cow through the frosty grass for milking, when we were both young.

She stirs, focuses her attention on me again.

‘You’re so good to me. I want to sit and look at you.’

‘That’s how you always were to me. I’m only returning your warmth and kindness. You always said, ‘As you sow, so shall you reap.’ Remember? I’m trying to give you what you deserve.’

‘Had an easy ride, didn’t you? Through life. Easy?’ An anxious look flickers over her face. Even at this stage it is essential for her to know that I have arrived to where I am today in peace and plenty.

‘Very easy. Yes, Mum. Easy riding was done by me.’ I smile at her to reassure her, knowing she has totally forgotten the exact details of my life.

‘Good. Good. I tried to make it.’ She sighs with relief and I am content that she has reached a stage of hard-won peace of mind, as foggy as it may be.

‘You succeeded in that,’ I remind her, as that is what I want her to take with her into her last days.

She frowns, looks around. Eventually she says, ‘Dog,’ and shudders.

‘Don’t worry, darling. It’s gone for good,’ I am thankful to be able to tell her, as hard as it has been for me to win my case in favor of the dog being banished from the nursing home.

‘Got me up. Pull. Didn’t like it.’ A recent fall is so described, in which she had to be helped to her feet.

‘Yes, sweetheart. You’re okay now.’ Thank God she has good strong bones even in her eighties and after many falls she has never had a fracture.

The face is the one that waited for me outside the school, that bent over my grazed knee, thanked me for the flowers I picked through the fences for her on my way home from school, smiled at my babies, sang lullabies to them.

Those are the arms that held her infant when my father rejected us and all hope was abandoned.

Those arms sheltered me from taunts of ‘bastard’ by schoolyard bullies and from similar torments, bruising, beatings by the father of my children.

Those arms held her only child, grandchildren, then later her great-grandchildren, born over a period of forty-five years. She told me how much love she’d had in her life by giving birth to me through an act of violence. She, chosen by her parents to be nurse/housekeeper to them in their old age, would otherwise never have known the love of her own progeny.

In protest against the conventions that can and do cripple lives, she kept me, reared me, always stayed close and watched over me. Always grateful to her parents for giving us a home and succor, she cared for them until they passed away.

Those hands made my Sunday School dresses, bootees for her great-grandchildren, tended her grandfather, parents, child, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Those hands washed, ironed, cleaned and cooked for boarders while she reared me.

Her eyes smile into mine. Again she brushes and plaits my hair, makes me a costume for the school Fancy Dress Ball, makes cup cakes for my birthday parties. Standing in the doorway, she waves goodbye to me as I turn the corner to go to work, spreads my mauve tulle dress on the bed for me to wear to the ball that night. Waits for me to ring her from the Post Office each morning when I go to dispatch the mail from work.

Invites my boyfriend for Sunday night dinner even though she was not able to pay the electricity bill that week, nor buy a new winter cardigan. Smiles when I change from the company of a boy she loves like a son to one she fears is a bully. Warns me gently. I don’t listen. He’s not like that. I know best. I am seventeen and know how the world works.

Buys a pair of Onkaparinga blankets, best on the market for the bridal couple. Knits a white bunny rabbit and a matinee jacket for a grandchild.

She finishes her vitamized meal. She will not wear a bib at mealtimes like many of the residents do. Her grandson would not wear a bib, either, when he sat in his highchair and looked at his family seated around the table. They were not wearing bibs. Nor would he. Nor will she. I smile to myself as I resurrect the memories.

We have a little walk down the hallway towards the security door. I know the code to key in when I can stay no longer. ‘4,5,6,7,B’. B for Breakout.

She must stay.

‘It’s cold, but not much, but outside. Trees. Look. What’s chomping and the bird...floral thing...wind.’

‘Yes, very windy and cold out there. The leaves and flowers are all blowing off the trees. It’s autumn, Mum.’

‘Lonely. Always alone. Come here. Live. That room.’ She indicates a room to the left where an aged man lies dying, a woman by his side holding his hand.

‘Darling, I can’t live here but I come every day or ring when I can’t come, you know.’

We have had this conversation numerous times. Why, then, do I still feel overwhelming guilt when I have to refuse her wishes?

‘Yes, but God, paper, the soft thing. Blood, was it?’ She shows signs of distress but I don’t know the cause.

‘Probably. More than likely, Mum.’ Best to simply agree and hope that the turmoil she suffers momentarily passes.

‘Where are Mum and Dad? Nell? When will they come?’ She looks at me intently, sure that I know the answers to where her relatives have all gone.

‘They’re gone, sweetheart. There’s only you and me left now out of all the old family members and we’re growing old.’ We have discussed this many times and yet I still hate to see the fresh agony she displays on hearing of their disappearance.

‘Gone? Gone? No.’ This statement seems to distress her as though it’s the first time she’s learned of the loss of her beloved parents and sister decades ago.

‘You’re eighty-three, you know. I’m sixty-one.’ Do these figures mean anything to her?

‘No. Really? You couldn’t be. Not eighty-three? Dead?’ She regards me with amazement, the bearer of bad news who comes to tell her the same thing over and over.

‘You still have family who love you. We’re here for you.’ I try to reassure her with a smile and a squeeze of her hand but she will not take me at my word. She searches down the long corridor for them and will not settle.

‘Dead? But the thing? The basket in the ground, you know?’ she asks when we are finally sitting down again to settle her before I leave.

‘It’s all been over for a long time, some forty years since they died, pet. Don’t worry. Everything’s all right.’ Still puzzled by the latest news, she focuses on my face as though the answer is written there.

‘You love me, I know. Young ones, big ones, little.’ Ahh, so she remembers the young ones and the little ones. I am glad, for some unknown reason, that she does when she has forgotten so much else.

‘That’s right. We all love you the same as always. That will never change,’ I tell her as I do most days.

‘Do you? I hope so. I don’t have anything else,’ she says as she rubs the back of my hand with her own lovely soft hand. I recall the years when I was a little girl and she used a cream called Soft as Silk to keep her hands, of which she was very proud, soft and supple.

‘I know, darling. But I have to go now.’ Reluctantly, I stand to go. This is always the hardest part of the visit.

‘Go? Leave me?’ The same shock as she gets every day and the same pain in my heart.

‘Yes. For today. I’ll be back tomorrow.’ I smile at her and pat her hand, gently removing my hand from her grip, sadly, as though it would be our last conversation.

‘Yes. Please come. Come all the time,’ she says, a tremor in her voice.

‘You’d better believe it,’ I tell her and give her one last farewell kiss and hug.