The Healing Party (19 page)

‘Take your time,' he said. ‘Have your coffee.' He slid my cup, which I had not touched, closer to me.

‘Maybe we can't rise above sickness without first accepting it …' I took a sip of my coffee. ‘Sorry, I don't know what I'm saying.'

‘People need to be transformed,' he said. He fixed his eyes on me. I had never seen him so strong and serious.

‘How were you transformed?' I asked.

Ed stubbed out his cigarette, moved his chair closer, grazed my legs with his. ‘I'll only say that I was delivered. I didn't have a hope in hell. I could do fuck-all myself. No amount of self-awareness or therapy or medication could stop me from drinking myself to death. It was only spiritual intervention, Jesus, that changed everything.' Ed's eyes, rimmed in dark lashes, glowing with fervour, held mine.

He spread his arms out on the table, his hands only inches from mine. ‘I recognised something in your father the day I saw him onstage at Dallas Brooks Hall,' Ed continued. ‘He has this powerful, childlike faith. I knew it must have been from what he had experienced. He told me his story, that before he was saved he had a Yaoguai in him – or however he pronounced it. He explained it was a demon that had abducted and was consuming his soul. That is exactly how I was before being saved. Salvation, to him, was a miracle. That's how I feel too. I hope to have his childlike faith one day.' Sensing his excitement, I suddenly felt sad.

‘You're nothing like my father. I mean that in a good way,' I said.

‘Explain?'

‘He wants everyone to think he's a new man – a saint, in fact. But he's not.'

‘Well, no one's perfect. Give the man credit for trying.'

I bit my tongue.

‘And your mum is sweet and at the same time so strong,' he said.

‘Underneath she's full of fear.'

‘That makes her even stronger,' he said.

I didn't feel that this was all true, but it was good to hear, and he was kind. I felt immense gratitude. I put my hand on his. He pulled his hand away, picked up the coffee pot and walked to the sink. ‘You should probably go home now,' he said. ‘I'll walk you to the station.' I followed him to the sink. ‘You should go,' he said, without turning around.

‘I don't want to,' I said. He turned around and we started to kiss. I could feel his heart thumping against my breast.

‘Not like the other times. Gentle,' I said, leading him to the sofa and guiding him down beside me. ‘Slowly,' I said, trying to hold his hands back. He was sweating, his breath wild, his mouth and hands desperate and groping. I tried to slow him down, but caught his fever. He put me on my back, slammed into me. I gripped him to me.

As soon as we had both come, he pulled away. He sat on the edge of the couch and lit a smoke. His body turned away from me.

I waited for my jagged breath and nerves to settle. I sat up, gathered my fallen clothes and held them in a bundle to my breast. ‘Are you okay?' I said.

‘I am trying to live as a Christian. You are not helping me.' He still wouldn't look at me.

‘I didn't know how seriously you took the “no sex before marriage” rule. Many Charismatics don't worry about it, or if they do, they just ask God for forgiveness afterwards.'

‘Don't mock.'

‘I'm sorry. I just can't see how this can be wrong. You're just being true to yourself,' I said, feeling pathetic.

‘If I was being true to myself, I'd scull a bottle of Scotch right now. I'd fuck anything in sight,' he said.

He finally turned to face me. ‘I don't like being used,' he said. He looked so distant and cold that it frightened me.

I pulled on my clothes, getting more and more angry. ‘I was wrong about you,' I said. ‘You're just as fucked up as the other Charismatics. You're not changed. You've just replaced alcohol with Jesus. And you want to know who's really using you? Paul Chan. That's right, my father is using you. He shared his touching testimony with you, right? He said you're special, creative, so deeply spiritual? He's always looking for someone vulnerable. Someone who will admire him and do his bidding. Just be grateful you're not a girl, because —' I stopped myself before I could say any more, and ran out of his house.

*

I let myself be swallowed up in the rush-hour crowd flowing up and down the city pavements. These people, going about with such busyness – what thought did they have for the saved and the damned, faith and disbelief, who is with us and who against us?

When it got dark, I took a train and then a bus home. On entering the front door, I could hear praying from the family room. I tried to make it to my room without being noticed, but Patsy came to my door. ‘Dad wants you to join us,' she said. She took a look at my face. ‘It's okay, he's not angry at you anymore.'

I followed Patsy out. The whole family was there, as well as Troy, Dad's assistant director, and Bridie, his favourite actress from the drama group. They sat in a close circle around the coffee table laden with burning candles, their faces gentle in the light. A radiance came from the corner where the altar stood with its pillar candles still glimmering.

‘Oh good, Natasha's here. You have come just in time,' Dad said, standing up. I sat down on the carpet behind Maria, but she moved over for me to join the circle.

‘The Lord has asked me to share something with all of you,' Dad said. ‘We need to be able to see for this.' He bounded over to the switch and harsh, yellowish light saturated the room. ‘Now, how shall I present this?' Rubbing his hands together, he positioned himself in front of the TV where everyone could see him. ‘I know, in a quiz. A quiz. A test for your intelligence and imagination. Each of you will have a turn to answer. This is the question.' He paused and raised his hand. ‘What is the worst sin? We start with you, Anita, and we'll go round this way.' He gestured clockwise. ‘What is the worst sin?'

‘Okay. It is a mortal sin to reject Jesus when he has shown you his grace,' Anita said.

‘Good answer, but not correct.'

‘Really? That's what I learnt in catechism,' Anita countered.

‘Then we must update your learning.' Dad said.

Anita pulled a cheeky face. ‘Oh, really!'

I ran through some answers in my head, preparing for my turn, starting to feel nervous.

Troy was next. ‘Isn't there something in the bible about using God's name in vain?'

‘So there is. But this, the worst of sins, you will know it straightaway when I say it,' said Dad. ‘Now Patsy next.'

Patsy held herself rigid. ‘Thou shalt not have other gods before me – the first commandment,' she said. Her eyes darted up, eager for approval.

‘Very true, but not quite,' Dad said. ‘Irene, your turn.'

‘No, la,' Mum said. ‘Ask someone else. I like to listen.'

‘Pride is the worst sin,' Charles said.

‘Uh-huh! Now we're getting somewhere. Natasha, your turn.'

‘The worst sin is killing unborn innocent babies in the womb,' I said, choosing the words Dad commonly used but injecting them with sarcasm.

‘Well, I hoped for more imagination from one of my daughters,' Dad said. ‘I will give you all a hint. What does Satan represent?'

‘Evil?' Maria said.

‘Try again,' Dad said, bouncing on his feet.

‘Deceiver?' Patsy said.

Dad clapped his hands. ‘Got it. Satan is a liar. God is truth. The worst sin is lying. All the worst evil is caused by lies.' I knew this was meant for me. His theatrical gaze embraced everyone in the room, but excluded me.

I
T WAS 3 P.M., TIME FOR MEDITATION.
I
HEADED TO
Mum's room to see if she was awake.

Our meditation sessions were the one thing I felt I could offer her. I continued to modify the Vipassana technique I had learnt so that she would accept it as Christian meditation and not ‘worship of the Self-God', as Dad called it. It seemed to me that it helped still our minds, and gave respite, at least for a few minutes, from all that hoping and anxiety.

When I walked into her room, Mum was sitting up in bed, waiting.

‘I don't want any more meditation. It's no good,' she said.

She might as well have slapped me. ‘But I thought you liked it.'

‘Do not open yourself to other gods,' she said.

‘The focus is on Jesus,' I lied.

‘No!' she said.

‘It's good for you, it helps you to relax, it's —'

‘No more!' She jerked her head away from me and scrunched up her eyes.

I flinched. Was there some evil in me that she needed to shut out? She must have guessed I had been lying to her about the meditation being Christian-based.

‘Read the bible to me,' she said. ‘Just open any page.'

I set the book on its spine and let it fall open, the way the Charismatics did when they asked Jesus for His message to them. Trying to muffle the hurt in my voice, I read from the top of the right page. The bible had opened on the Book of Ezra, Chapter Eight. A list of names of the descendants from Babylon ensued. The passages were insignificant. It didn't matter, I thought. Anything to shut me up. Who had I been trying to fool? She had no doubt suspected me from the start but was probably trying to please me, in the way she tried to please so many people.

I closed the bible. ‘Mum, I need to go back to Darwin. I've been jobless for nearly three months. I was thinking of buying a ticket for next week,' I said. I started to shake. I had been considering leaving for a few days now, but the suddenness of my decision surprised even me.

Her head drooped. She said nothing.

‘Mum, did you hear me?' I said, feeling cruel.

‘Oh, yes,' she said, ‘your job is important. You have already stayed so long.'

‘I will come back to Melbourne in a couple of months' time, around Christmas.'

She was silent again. When she lifted her head back up, she had put on a stiff smile. ‘Maybe I will visit you in Darwin before then, when I am healed,' she said.

At dinner, I told the rest of the family. No one had much to say. ‘That's life. When work calls, we must answer,' Dad said. Anita shrugged, as though she was thinking,
Do what you like, that's what you always do anyway
. Patsy also said nothing, but I saw her lip curl in disapproval. Only Maria expressed regret. ‘We'll miss you and all your help,' she said.

That night, I booked and paid for my ticket. I would leave in seven days' time. I felt guilty, but also in a mood to celebrate. I thought ahead to the rush of freedom I would feel when the plane's wheels left the ground.

*

By the next morning, I felt loathsome. I tried to tell myself not to feel guilty. I had come wanting to make things better for Mum, but had seemed only to make them worse. Let them get on with it – who did I think I was, trying to change things? They didn't need or even want me here. Mum was responding well to the chemo, and Maria and Patsy could take on her morning care. Besides, I had been living off my savings for the last three months and needed to work. And there was Jason – I had to face the shameful way I had broken up with him.

I hid in my room. At least here the walls were bare, free of Dad's montages of bare-breasted women, leaping tigers and faces of Jesus dripping red. Shouts and song and Dad's urging voice came from a drama rehearsal in the lounge room. In the family room, a vigil group chanted the rosary. All day long, people streamed in and out to keep the vigil going, letting in the cold, soiling the carpet with their shoes, making a public space of our house. I wondered what I was doing here, and why I had stayed so long.

The sound of Maria's and Patsy's laughter came from Mum's room. Maria had a date that night with the nephew of an elderly couple who belonged to the Missionaries for Christ community. So far I had gleaned that his name was John, he was Catholic and had a public service job. It was Maria's first date in about five years. There had been a string of boyfriends until she was about twenty-two, but then they stopped. At family prayers, Mum often prayed out loud that Maria would find a good boyfriend. Mum believed a girl should be married and starting a family by the age of twenty-seven.

It was hard to believe, but I had never seen Maria nude, or even in her underwear. She changed in the bathroom or toilet, where the doors had locks, never in her bedroom. If she had to go swimming, she would enter the water with trousers and a T-shirt over her bathers, and get dressed in a toilet cubicle rather than an open change area. I remembered the time I soaked her with a hose in the garden of the house on the hill. Mum told us to take our wet clothes off before coming inside. It was before we were old enough to have boobs, but still Maria refused. Mum grabbed her and started pulling off her T-shirt. I remember how desperate and wild Maria looked, like the stray cats that we chased and caught by the tail. She bit Mum's hand and ran away. It was the only time I saw Maria disobey either Mum or Dad.

Maria's early boyfriends were mainly clean, good-looking Christian boys who came to our prayer meetings and eventually found themselves working on one of Dad's projects. Maria was always evasive with them. The poor guy would almost never get her to himself, and she never as much as held hands with him, at least not in front of us. Whether at a prayer meeting or party or disco, she made sure there was no opportunity for intimacy. She would invite other friends to join them or abandon the boyfriend for the night and flit from one person to another, witnessing to them about Jesus.

She did behave differently with one man – brash and handsome Walter, with the silver car. It was he who did the socialising and evangelising, while she followed him around, timid and mute. When she stood by his side, he had a habit of standing with his foot pressed over hers. I remembered thinking, the first time I saw it, how sexually thrilling that simple act of dominion was. But the more we saw of him, the more everyone except Maria disliked Walter. After I moved to Darwin, I heard he had dropped Maria and taken up with a new member of Missionaries for Christ. Gradually, Maria stopped dressing up and started to live in baggy tracksuits, except when she had to dress for prayer meetings. As far as I knew, she didn't go on any more dates – not unless you counted the down-and-outs and needy guys who'd think she was asking them out, when actually she was trying to convert them, like some kind of hooker for Christ.

Maria came to my door. ‘Hi, what are you up to?' she asked, in her caring voice.

‘Reading,' I said, without lifting my eyes from the newspaper in my hands.

‘Are you all right?' she asked, stepping inside.

‘Why shouldn't I be all right?'

‘Mum wants me to choose one of her dresses to wear tonight. Come and help us.'

‘It's okay,' I said, looking up for a moment and seeing the sympathy in Maria's eyes. ‘I've got things I have to do.'

Patsy came to the door. ‘Natasha, did you remember to use the holy oil when you massaged Mum's feet, like I said?'

I didn't look up from the paper or answer her.

‘Come on, help us choose a dress. We need your good taste,' said Maria. ‘I need you to do my make-up too.'

Maria had always been kind. When I was too young to go out, she had let me do her make-up before her dates so that I could share in the fun. But right now, her kindness enraged me. ‘Why are you even going out with him?' I said.

‘Leave Maria alone,' said Patsy. ‘We never asked you why you went out with Ed, did we?'

I put down the newspaper. ‘We were attracted to each other, that's why Ed and I went out. Maria's not attracted to John.'

‘Pity it didn't work out between you and Ed. There's more to relationships than attraction,' Patsy said.

‘And you would know?' I said, and immediately regretted my cheap jab. Patsy looked away, pretending she hadn't heard me, but I knew she was hurt.

Maria leant against my bed. ‘I admit I don't find John good-looking, but he seems all right.'

‘Crap. You're doing it for Mum. Which is not a good reason to go out with someone,' I said.

‘The Lord put it on Dad's heart that I should give him a go,' Maria said.

‘How about making your own decisions?' I said.

Patsy snorted. ‘It would be so much easier if Maria and I did what we wanted rather than what God wanted. It's easy to make your own decisions when you're selfish.'

I glared at Patsy. ‘So you're saying I'm selfish.'

‘I'm not saying anything,' said Patsy. ‘I'm just stating a fact. It's easy to make a decision when you think only of yourself.'

Maria looked at Patsy and me, and made a funny chomping motion with her mouth. ‘Come on, you kids!'

We heard Mum calling. Patsy went to help. When Mum came out of the toilet, she called for me to join them and that settled it. I got up and walked into her bedroom.

Mum kept what we called her ‘glamour' clothes in a grand old cedar wardrobe that covered part of one wall. Next to it was a smaller, modest pine wardrobe in which she kept her everyday wear. Since the cancer, the pine wardrobe was opened and shut several times a day as we selected clothes for Mum to wear. The cedar wardrobe, however, had only been opened the one time we picked out the silk cheongsam that Mum wore for the healing party.

Maria, Patsy and I flung open the three doors of the grand old wardrobe and the cool cedar-and-mothball air flared out. At first it was dark in there, but then an overhead fluorescent light flickered on and myriad colours appeared. Hanging from a two-metre-long railing, pressed tightly against each other, were clothes of every imaginable colour, material and texture. Together they represented the forty years of Mum's adult life.

Get three new sets of clothing at Chinese New Year and throw three old ones out
, Mum had told us. But she seldom threw anything out. Until the cancer made her stomach bloat, she could still fit into clothes that she had worn when she was twenty-five. My favourites were her tailor-made cheongsams and, from the sixties, the slinky jacket and trouser suits in metallic fabrics.

Whether it was she who selected the clothing or Dad (he said he chose the fabrics), to me they were Mum's artistry. As a child, unseen, I would crawl inside and squeeze through the tangle of clothes. I remembered falling asleep curled up at the bottom of the wardrobe, enfolded and caressed by their soft weight.

‘Take them all out,' Mum said to Maria, ‘choose something young. Try whatever you like.'

Maria flicked through the garments, but they were all tightfitting, whereas she liked baggy clothes. ‘Help me choose,' she said.

I knew what I was looking for. It was a dress Mum had worn for the parties at the house on the hill. I pushed and pulled at the hangers, but the clothes were so densely hung, they wouldn't move. Grabbing with both hands, I prised them apart. The sight of the dresses brought up photo-like scenes – where Mum had worn them, the look on her face, the impression she'd made. I felt an urge to hug the dresses to me, run my face and hands over their textures and smell their dank perfume.

I crouched to pick up some dresses that had fallen from their hangers, and my hand knocked against something hard and cold. It was the old tin that Mum kept in the back corner of the wardrobe. The tin had been there for as long as I could remember. Mum had always pestered Dad for extra shopping money, and every week she would secretly put some of this aside. None of us was supposed to know, but we all did. I wondered how much was in the tin now. It felt heavy.

I caught a glimmer of hot pink and pulled the dress out. Purple and red embroidery swirled over the pink metallic fabric. It was a halter-neck dress with a Mandarin collar and a deep V cut out at the cleavage. Fitted at the top, the dress flowed into a maxi skirt.

‘Trust Natasha to go for the sexy
humsup
dress,' said Patsy.

Mum gazed at it. ‘Oh yes, this dress,' she said. ‘When I wore it when I was your age, the men always look.' She opened her eyes wide with a curious mixture of coyness and disbelief. ‘They cannot control themselves.'

We all laughed.

‘Choose something else, it's not me,' said Maria.

‘Yes! Just right,' Mum said. ‘Maria needs to be more sexy.'

Maria groaned, and took the dress into the bathroom. Just then Anita entered, back from work. She asked Mum for the day's news, then went to have a look in the wardrobe herself. She went straight to Mum's more sophisticated outfits, pulling them out, trying on a jacket.

Maria stomped out of the bathroom wearing the dress, red in the face. She hadn't taken off her socks and sneakers, or her T-shirt, which poked out the arm-holes of the dress. None of the dress sat right – the bodice was pulled up so high that material bunched above her breasts, and the skirt was twisted almost back to front.

Mum's head wobbled – her face crumpled, tears welled in the corners of her eyes and her shoulders shook silently. Then
Ug …Ug … Ug …
gasps like sobs erupted from her.

‘Mum, are you all right?' said Patsy.

Mum covered her face, her body still shaking, took another look at Maria and was off again:
Ug … Ug … Ug
. We stared, unable to tell if she was laughing or crying. Anita was the first to make up her mind and she began to snicker along with her. Then the rest of us joined in.

‘Stand still,' Anita said, grabbing Maria's shoulders. Anita pushed and pulled on the dress, straightened the halter, twisted the seams till the V sat over her cleavage, and tugged the bodice down to the waist. Anita stepped out of her high heels and told Maria to put them on. Maria took off her sneakers, stepped into the heels, and stood in front of Mum.