Hard Word (19 page)

‘I will tell you,' Eleni begins, ‘my story today about my family, mainly about my mother.

‘My father left our home and the village and went to work in America when I was four. My mother and I stayed at the small farm we had, just outside Kozani, and we earned our living by selling goat's milk, and some eggs and vegetables to the convent. For two years my father sent money from America every month and occasionally he wrote and told us where he was working – he was a butcher, and he worked in the slaughterhouses in the big cities, first in Chicago, then in Philadelphia and New York. I would collect the stamps off his letters, in fact I still have them today – the stamps and my mother's and father's wedding photograph. I have brought it with me here today. After that, he hardly wrote at all, and gradually he stopped sending money. Then a whole year went by and we did not hear from him at all. Mama said he had probably started a new family in America, but half the village was like that and we were happy enough, just the two of us together. Still she prayed for him every day.

‘Later, when I finished school, I worked half of each day at home, helping Mama with the animals and the garden in the morning, and in the afternoons I worked in the convent hospital, carrying and cleaning. By then I knew many of the nuns well, and they knew me. They spoiled me with special cakes and sweets they made especially for me, and I was happy there. When Mama got sick, some of the nuns came, in secret, in veils, to see her, even though they'd never left the convent for years. When Mama is taken from you, they said after that visit, you must come to us.

‘What happened to Mama was, she lost her mind. I don't mean she went mad or crazy or that she raved and screamed or cursed Christ like some of the nuns I washed and nursed in the convent hospital. I mean her mind cleared, and she lost it. Her memory was stripped from her, and often she did not even know who I was, though we had lived every day together all my life. One by one her memories went, until she was like the clear spirit of a child again. She was very happy. Right at the end she did not even know who she was – she would look for hours in a mirror she kept in the pocket of her skirt, and sometimes point one finger at her image in it. Most of the day, if it was warm enough, she sat in the field behind the house with the goats and talked to them. The goats ate the corn out of her hands or her lap and licked her face. She made no effort to push them away.

‘When she died, I entered one of the daughter-houses of the convent. I spent four years there. The life was strict, but the order was only half-closed and I still worked during the day in the convent hospital. Some nights I was so exhausted, not just from my work, but from fasting and denial and meditation, that I fell asleep and sometimes did not wake for the midnight prayer. I was less at peace there with Mama gone, and in four years I had still only put my foot on the lowest rungs of the Ladder. The top four rungs – Stillness, Prayer, Dispassion, Love – seemed so far above my head, I did not think I would ever see them, let alone have any chance of reaching them. And of these four, it was not actually Love I found that I longed for – though it should have been – but Stillness,
esychia.
If only, I thought, I could attain that,
esychia
– Stillness – silence, peace, I would be satisfied.

‘Mother Theodora, the head of our convent, had ascended to the very top rung of the Ladder. She was famous for her holiness, not just in the region but in every part of the nation itself. The other nuns would secretly lie face down behind the low walls of the cloisters as Mother Theodora meditated and walked, praying that the shadow of her grace might fall upon them. And yet, on her death-bed, when the older nuns gathered around her and pressed their claims and questions upon her – and I, even I, was there, nursing her to her end – ‘‘Tell us, sister,'' they whispered, ‘‘what have you seen? Has the way been opened to you? Have you looked Christ in the face?'' – because she
should
have. This was Climacus' promise. That those who ascended to the top rung of the Ladder of Divine Ascent would find Christ, the Bridegroom, waiting, arms spread to greet them, draw them up to Him – yet, on her death-bed, our Mother, most blessed of all, was dejected and trembling and full of doubt: ‘‘Will my soul,'' she cried, ‘‘pass through the impassable water of the spirits of the air?'' And when I looked at the nuns' faces, the faces of those who ascended in her steps, I saw that some of them wept, and some were full of terror.

‘After Mother Theodora's death, I left the Order and came here, to Australia, where I know no one either. And where I wonder still why Christ's
charisma,
His Divine Grace, should have been given to my mother, who could not even read or write, and not to my Mother in spirit, who had given her whole life to Christ, and yet at the end He had not come to receive her. Here in the hospice where I work, I still follow this question. I see my patients, in the instant of passing, I see the light that sometimes comes into their faces, and I ask: ‘‘What do you see, sister? Brother? Has the way been opened to you? Have you looked Christ in the face?''

‘And it is true, I have found, that those who are most simple, those who, like my mother, have lost their minds, they slip away, in Stillness, while others are still angry and troubled and grieved – looking back, even as they go. And I pray to Christ to make me a child again.

‘This is my story.'

‘Thank you, Eleni,' I say, and then wait for the clapping to stop. Already two hands are rising with questions, but for the moment I pretend I cannot see them.

‘Eleni,' I say, not waiting for anyone else. ‘When your mother … lost her mind, when she forgot everything and did not even know who you were, how did you feel, what did it make you feel?'

‘I feel like …' she starts, and I'm so transfixed and fearful about what she might say that I do not even intervene to correct her grammar. ‘I feel,' she says again, searching for her words, ‘like my mother is vanishing in front of my eyes. And me with her …'

‘What do you mean?'

‘We have lived together, my mother and me, every day of my life. I learn about myself through my mother. She knows some things about me that no one else ever knows. When she forgets them, they are gone, and that part of me vanishes with them. It is hard to explain … It is like this. When her memory goes, my mother returns to her own childhood. She lives there. But I am not even alive then. It is before I am born, so I stop to exist. She does not know me. Do you see?'

‘Yes,' I say. ‘Yes, I do. Thank you, Eleni.'

There are more questions, harmless ones about Greece, about life in the convent, about the Greek hospice she works at in Sydney. Time passes, and I call a halt.

‘Now don't forget,' I tell them as they prepare to leave. ‘Saturday at twelve.'

‘Aussie barbecue –' Hafize says.

‘Yes. You all have a map, everyone has transport. Your husbands can stay home for once and cook for the children –'

‘Yes,' one of them cries. ‘It will do him good.'

‘Is there anyone,' I say, ‘who still has a problem – with anything at all? With transport? Babies – no one here has a baby? No, no,' I say to Njala, my Lebanese student, who is six months pregnant. ‘I meant one that is already born.'

‘One that is out,' Maria says, with gestures, and even the Asian girls laugh before they can get their hands up to cover their mouths.

There is still one hand up.

‘Yes, Sorathy?' I say. Her permissions have been approved – a cultural event, sponsored by the college – her transport arranged. ‘What is your problem?'

‘I can bring my daughter?' she says.

And, for once, at long last, I manage it. I don't let my jaw drop. I don't say,
Daughter? But this is the first we've heard anything about any daughter,
or
We didn't even know you were married
… I'm almost proud to hear the calmness in the echo of my own voice as I ask:

‘How old is your daughter, Sorathy?'

‘She nearly two years.'

‘I can't see any reason she shouldn't come,' I say. ‘We'd all love to meet her, wouldn't we?'

‘Yes, oh, yes,' they say, over the top of one another. ‘What is her name?'

‘She is My Huoy,' Sorathy says, blushing now.
‘My
mean beautiful, and
Huoy
mean flower.'

How on earth, I'm wondering as I listen to this, has Sorathy got a daughter of nearly two if she's been in detention in Port Headland for eighteen months, and then another year here in Sydney. And
My Huoy –?
It sounds more Chinese than Khmer.

Later, as the class drifts out, I can't stop myself from saying to Kossamak, the other Cambodian student, ‘I didn't know Sorathy had a daughter?'

Kossamak looks up at me and then lets her eyes travel around the empty classroom. ‘Sorathy,' she says, ‘she not take her daughter out.'

‘Of detention, you mean? She lives in the Detention Centre with Sorathy?'

‘That's right. She shame.'

‘She shouldn't be,' I say, simply to fill a space. ‘Why should she be ashamed of her daughter?'

‘Daughter have wrong eye,' Kossamak says.

‘Wrong eye?' I say, feeling totally lost.

‘
Chinoise
,' Kossamak says. ‘She get her baby in South China Sea. From pirate.'

‘Oh, I see.' And, stunned, I don't even think of correcting her
get
to
got
. Especially when
gat
seems more appropriate anyway.

‘Eye wrong,' Kossamak says again, pointing to her own perfectly oval eye. ‘Sorathy baby have fold here,' she says. ‘Everyone know she Chinese or
Vietnamienne,
not Khmer baby at all. Not a boy,' she adds. As though that might just have compensated.

‘Still, a child …' I just manage, in my inadequate English. While she stands, as if expecting something more.

Laura

The movie was wonderful, and sad and funny and everything, and by the interval Philip was already feeling like Shakespeare and had fallen in love with Gwyneth Paltrow who was so beautiful I didn't mind, and anyway after that he held my hand and I liked that, and I was glad he didn't do it for the whole movie because your hand gets all sticky and then gets pins and needles and nearly falls off, but you don't know whether to tell the person or just pull your hand away and stretch it secretly to get the blood back, which they might think is rude, or that you don't like them. Anyway I was glad he held it after he'd said he liked Gwenyth Paltrow so much and not before, because I'm not sure how I would have felt then. Philip was really nice and I like him a lot, and he was funny as well – the things he whispered in the film – which took a while to get used to because at school you usually only see him being serious and saying
‘School!
' and that, and nodding while Mr Jackson, the Principal, talks to him for six or seven hours after assembly while the rest of us file out of the hall.

After the movie we came home and had coffee just like Mum said, and it wasn't a problem at all, and everyone laughed when I said ‘Philip, this is Philip,' and Philip – my Philip – said later, ‘Your mum's really pretty.' And I could see he meant it and wasn't just sucking up or anything, and I liked that, and I liked it even more when he said, ‘Like you, Laura.'

‘But not really like you,' he said afterwards, ‘because you're so dark and your Mum's so fair and she has those strange eyes.'

‘They're green,' I told him, because sometimes it's hard to tell with fluorescent lights, and he said he didn't think he'd ever met anyone with green eyes. ‘But sometimes they're more yellowy,' I said, ‘depending on the light.' And he said some people did that now with contacts, but I told him Mum's were real.

Mum and Philip left us after we had coffee, and we watched the late-night movie on TV – it was
Casablanca
– and I think they were watching it too because it's a favourite of Mum's, but in their bedroom, so we wouldn't have to talk to them all the time and feel we were being supervised. Anyway, by halfway through the movie, Philip was falling for Ingrid Bergman and had forgotten all about Gwenyth Paltrow even though he was in love with her an hour before and Ingrid Bergman was only in black and white and lived last century, and I was starting to think Philip was the sort of person who would fall in love with anyone who was pretty, but then I realized I thought Humphrey Bogart was such a spunk and he'd been dead for centuries and centuries, and I stopped worrying.

The next day, Toni came round after she'd finished her job at Woolworths.

‘Well,' she said, without even saying hello. ‘Did you?'

‘Did I what?' I said. Though I knew. I was only being difficult.

‘Ooh, Laura –' she said. ‘You know as well as I do. Kiss him, of course.'

‘Yes,' I said. But I wasn't going to tell her if she asked me how.

‘How?' she asked me.

‘With my mouth,' I said.

‘Ooh –' she said again. She was getting really frustrated. ‘You're not going to tell me, are you? You promised you would. Afterwards, you said.'

‘I promised I'd tell you whether, not how.'

‘I'm your best friend.'

‘It wouldn't be fair to Philip.'

‘
Philip?
' she said. ‘What's Philip got to do with it?'

Toni's like that, so when she wanted to know if Philip had asked me out again, I told her yes, and I liked him a lot. And she looked at me and didn't say anything at all for a long time after that. So I put on some K O Я N, and we just lay on the bed and listened to that for a while. We didn't have any homework to worry about or anything because it was mid-term break and we could do it all next weekend instead, except Mum, I knew, would make me read books even though it was the holidays. But, depending on the book, I don't mind that so much. I'm like Philip – Mum's Philip – in that way. I enjoy going through his books, even though a lot of them are boring and technical and Law and that, but not everything – he has fiction and biography and history and poetry and comedy – I suppose that's where he gets a lot of his stupid jokes. Like he was telling this particular joke at dinner the other night – I normally don't like jokes … or I do, but not ones that are written down and come out of a book and have a punch line and that. I like jokes more that happen when you're talking and that come out naturally, when people make them up while they're talking. And Mum's the same. Anyway Philip was telling this joke, and in the end it wasn't all that funny by itself, but what happened after was.

We were having dinner, and we were all there, which is unusual because Mum mostly feeds Grandma Vera separately now, by herself, because it's quicker and Grandma Vera doesn't sit at the table then and dribble and spit in her cup and burp all the time and put everyone off their own food. But this was the term break and so Mum wasn't rushing and she could sit next to Grandma Vera and help her with her food and she's always saying she'd like it to be that way all the time, three generations around one table or something historical like that, but she just couldn't manage it any more. Anyway Mum had just asked me if I'd had a nice time at the movie with Philip and I'd said yes, and could he come round one afternoon this week, when we didn't have school, and listen to music in my room, and Mum said, ‘Yes, of course,' but as she said it, she gave me that look that means
I know what I'm saying, but do you know what you're saying?
and makes you think again. And I know what she means. She means, if Philip comes round in the afternoon, he'll meet Grandma Vera, and how do I feel about that.

‘I've already told Philip,' I say to her then. ‘I told him Grandma was sick.'

‘Sick,' says Grandma Vera and pats Katie's hand. Katie's sitting on the other side of Grandma from Mum. ‘Sick,' she says again and shakes her head like she's just heard Katie's got leprosy or leukemia or something.

‘But did you tell him
how
she was sick?' Mum says.

‘Yes, I told him she had Alzheimer's.' Which might seem a strange thing to say while Grandma Vera's there with us, but Mum encourages us to talk openly together, to share, like this. And anyway she says that anything you say to Grandma Vera now is lost as soon as you say it and words like
Alzheimer's
don't mean anything to her.

‘And what did Philip say then?' Mum wants to know.

‘Well,' I say, ‘that was the amazing thing, because I only told him just before he was leaving, and I'd been waiting and waiting to tell him but I didn't know how, and he mentioned something about his family and I blurted it out about Grandma Vera, and he just said, ‘‘My grandfather's exactly the same. He can never remember my name either. He keeps calling me George who was his son who was killed in the Second World War about a hundred years ago –''

‘Well, there you are,' Mum says. ‘You see, it's not so –'

‘Maybe we should get them together,' Philip says then, breaking in on Mum. ‘They could sit around and talk nonsense to one another all day long. Which reminds me …' he says, and starts telling this joke about an old couple both of whose memories are going at the same time and they agree they should write everything down so they won't forget. ‘And one night,' he says –

‘Is this clean, Philip?' Mum says. She's thinking about Katie.

‘Perfectly. It's absolutely sanitary, which is more than you can say about the couple themselves. Anyway they're watching TV one night and the woman says ‘‘I'd love some ice-cream.'' ‘‘Fine,'' the man says, ‘‘I'll get you some from the fridge.'' ‘‘Write it down,'' she says, ‘‘you'll forget.'' ‘‘Forget ice-cream?'' he says. ‘‘Don't be silly.'' ‘‘But I want topping,'' she says. ‘‘Okay, you can have topping.'' ‘‘And strawberries. You'll need to write it down.'' The man makes a face and disappears. He comes back from the kitchen ten minutes later with a plate of toast and fried eggs and tomatoes. The woman looks at it and says: ‘‘Now see what you've done. You've forgotten the bacon.'' '

Mum groans at this, and I've been practising all the time he's been telling the story so that at the punch line my face doesn't change at all and I just ask Katie to pass the salt, but Philip's pleased with himself anyway. And he's the one who's doing all the grinning and he even turns to Grandma Vera and says, ‘No bacon, eh, Mother?' And you'll never guess what she says back. She says:

‘Yes, please. Bacon, please. Like it. Like bacon.'

And Philip's mouth drops open, and Grandma Vera pushes her plate and looks at Philip, and he starts to say, ‘No, no, it was just a joke, Mother. You see, there wasn't really any bacon, it was just –'

‘Bacon,' Grandma Vera says, and pushes her plate a bit more.

‘Christ,' Philip says under his breath.

‘Now be civil, darling,' Mum says. ‘You brought up the subject of bacon in the first place …'

‘Bacon,' Grandma Vera says.

‘And now Mother would like some,' Mum says.

‘Yes, please,' Grandma Vera says.

‘And so would you make her some, please? You'll find some rashers in the door of the fridge, second shelf down. Two pieces should be enough.'

And Katie and I of course are cacking ourselves stupid by this time, and Philip's face is as black as a storm cloud, and he doesn't know what else to do, so he stands up and gets a fry pan out of the cupboard and gets the bacon out of the fridge while Mum's saying: ‘Put your own soup back in the pot, darling, so it doesn't get cold while you're cooking.' But Philip doesn't say anything. And Mum gives us a warning look then, but we can see she thinks it's funny herself and so for the next five minutes while Philip's cooking the bacon, there are just these loud splurts from Katie and me, and Katie does it in her water at one point and her splurt goes flying everywhere, and Mum gets upset then and says, ‘That's enough.'

But Grandma Vera's just as bad as Katie and me, because she whispers ‘Prick Philip,' and Mum pretends she doesn't hear, like she sometimes does when Katie and I are out and misbehaving and she fakes it that she doesn't notice and thinks we'll get tired ofit and stop, but we never do. ‘Prick Philip,' Grandma whispers again, and that's all right because Philip's way over near the stove and will never hear her, until Katie goes:

‘Purrr-ickkk Philip!'

And Philip jumps around as if he's been hit by a barrel of burning fat and looks at Mum and says, ‘What did she say?'

‘Prick, Philip,' Mum goes, as calm and quick as anything. ‘Katie's asking you to prick the bacon for Grandma. That's how she likes it.'

And poor Philip. He looks bewildered like he's starting to hear things inside his head and doesn't know what's going on.

‘Oh,' he says, and All right,' he says, and gets a long-handled fork from the drawer and starts jabbing at the bacon with it, but it's obvious he doesn't know how to or even whether he should be doing it. Mum does nearly all the cooking except sometimes Philip barbecues on the weekends. Philip's turned back to the stove again now, and that's when Mum gives Katie the filthiest look and says, ‘Eat your soup, Miss,' and her look's so foul, blacker even than Philip's, that Katie doesn't say, Drink it, don't you mean?, although I can see her lip's quivering to say it. In fact everyone's quiet while the bacon's cooking, Grandma included.

By the time Philip's finished, he's beginning to see the funny side. The black's gone out of his face now, and I don't mind Philip so much sometimes, because at least he can see a joke, even if it's on him. And these are the sorts of jokes I prefer, not ones that are all set up and fixed, and they're always the same thing over and over. Like the old one about the yoghurt, and the person who's got the Alzheimer's finds a note on their fridge from their daughter or someone that says
For lunch eat one of the yoghurts in the fridge,
and the daughter comes home from work and says to her mother, ‘Did you eat a yoghurt for lunch?', and the mother can't remember, so the daughter goes to the fridge and all the yoghurt containers have gone, a dozen of them, and she goes to the garbage bin and finds the empty containers are all there, and the mother's eaten them all because every time she passed the fridge she saw this note telling her to eat a yoghurt for lunch. Only we're not allowed to tell this joke while Philip's around because that's exactly what happened to Grandma Vera with her medicine and Mum came home and found her unconscious and had to get an ambulance. But she's never told Philip, and she doesn't want the joke mentioned in his presence in case he starts thinking.

Anyway Philip finally gets the bacon back to the table and puts it on the hotmat in front of Grandma Vera and he's laughing out loud now, and I know that means he's already thinking inside his head how he can tell this story at work tomorrow. And Grandma Vera just looks at the bacon as if it had appeared from outer space, and says:

‘Stinks!' and pushes it away. ‘Hate bacon,' she says.

And then the joke starts to go sour, and it's Philip's turn to splutter, and Mum, I notice, doesn't look at him. She looks at Grandma Vera instead and says, ‘Mother, why are you doing that?'

Grandma Vera has broken her bread up into small pieces and is picking up each piece in two hands and holding it up above her head and then bringing it down slowly to her mouth again – like it really is space food coming through the ceiling, and bits of food and crumbs are going everywhere.

‘It'd be much easier if you just ate it straight off the plate,' Mum says. ‘Or if I fed you, wouldn't it? Here, let me help you.'