Hard Word (30 page)

We'd come to see the ‘new fishermen', the men who fished for others, the pirates of the South China Sea who preyed on the boat people. It was the word
pirate
which drew us. The pictures in our heads were those of Sinbad and Captain Hook and Long John Silver and maybe Drake, and it seemed romantic to visit them, to walk safely in the sun on the wharves and stare at these nondescript wooden hulks and to see the villainous crews who sailed them. And then we saw the villainous crews, and were appalled. One man I'll remember as long as I live. He visits me still sometimes at night, and each time I am terrified. He squatted this day on the wheelhouse of a fishing boat, body and face of a monkey, a tiny figure with bare torso and feet, and black, torn trousers. He was fixing a rope of some kind, and had a knife in his mouth to leave his hands free to work on the rope. As we came near, he looked across at us, dark startled eyes, then grinned, not at Philip whom he barely glanced at, but at me, and my blood chilled instantly. Philip even waved at him and said something to me, something like, ‘He looks as though he's about twelve,' but I knew he wasn't, I knew he'd never been twelve, that he was what he was now – thirty, thirty-three, – four – at the moment of birth, an animal, a grinning killer without a gram of conscience or mercy. It was summer, I was wearing a loose blouse, and my hand went instinctively to the neck of it, to button it. While he looked and grinned and told me he knew what I was thinking, and that I was right. And I swear at that moment I felt the cold steel of his knife on my breast, and the hard, splintered boards of a boat deck against my back. I shivered all over, as if the sun itself had disappeared, though in fact it was only that we had moved within the shadow of the boat – and I ran. Past the boat, down off the end of the wharf into the heat and noise and life-giving stench of the fish market below. I looked back once, expecting to find that the whole thing was just a trick, an illusion of light and shadow that had distorted the man's face, but he sat there still, his head turned to follow me, and his face was in the sun now, and still grinning, and evil. Philip was standing below him, looking one way and then the other to find where I'd gone. The man on the boat wasn't looking at him at all but down the wharf and into the market where his eyes had picked me out immediately, had picked out my green eyes from the teeming crowd around me, my eyes, and my white skin.

‘Is it all right …' Sorathy says, ‘if I show pictures?'

I nod, not speaking. In my mind I see the bodies of brothers, of uncles and fathers, their throats cut, protesting against what is happening to the women. I see their bodies cast aside, like so much meat, fed to the fish overboard, or just left to lie, negligently, against the sides of the boat. To clear a space on the deck for the women and girls.

The class, like me, is silent. Like me, it is holding its breath.

‘I am Sorathy,' she says, ‘and I read you my story today.'

At the back of the class, I swallow and fix my eyes on her face, and swear to myself I will not look away until she has finished. I started this – as usual with what I thought was a good intention – but, like so much else, it has somehow got out of control. The least I can do is finish it.

‘I tell you today,' Sorathy says, ‘about the temple dance we do in my district in Cambodia. I did this dance when I was a girl, before I became a woman. It is a sacred dance in honour of the Lord Buddha. It is the dance for the Festival of the Full Moon, when we celebrate the Buddha's Birth and Enlightenment and Passing. Here is one picture of a girl doing the dance. I will tell you now about how important it is how you use your hands in this dance, and what all the movements mean …'

* *

‘I'll sign it,' I tell Pam. ‘But I'm not going to change this arrangement for the moment. It was made in good faith, on their side and on mine –'

‘I know it was, Mirry,' Pam says. She's softened in the intervening hour or so. Just as I've hardened. ‘I never doubted,' she says, ‘that it was done in good faith. That's not the issue, it's how it looks. Can you imagine what would happen if a newspaper got hold of this?
Teacher Uses Migrant Students as Domestic Maids, Marks for Hard Labour
…'

‘Yes,' I say. ‘I can see what you're worried about.'

‘It's the college, it's you, it's me –'

‘Look, Pam,' I say. ‘My mother's very ill, I've tried every possible avenue to get responsible sitters. The only alternative is to give up teaching here. And in five weeks, at the end of the term, I'm going to do just that.'

I look at her when I say this, waiting for a protest, waiting for her to say, But you're our best teacher, Mirry, you know that. I've just struggled to get you made permanent … She doesn't say any of this. She sits, and looks back. And this, I find, hurts.

‘In the meantime,' I say, ‘Mother is to go into a home, but I need a little time – two weeks perhaps – to get that settled,
and I just don't have anybody else.
Do you understand?'

‘And I don't have any option,' she says. ‘Do you understand that?'

‘Yes,' I say, and sign the formal letter of counselling. She dates it, and holds it.

‘Mirry,' she says. ‘The best I can do, is not to send this right now.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Normally I should put it straight on your file, and at some stage it would pass across the Principal's desk.'

‘But –?'

‘But if it were to lie in my drawer – forgotten for a week or so – and things changed in the meantime … You did say two weeks?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then it may not get on the file.'

‘Unless something happened?'

‘Yes. In which case, it will have been there all along.'

Grandma Vera

You fish to play?

‘What?' I say.

Fish to play?

‘Emily …'

‘Em?'

‘Em, is it really you?'

Oh Em –! At last.

Philip

‘Dad,' Katie says. ‘Do you
have
to go to the office?'

‘I'm afraid so, Kat,' I say. We're sitting over the remains of breakfast, I'm reading legal papers, Katie's drawing what looks like … well, actually I have no idea what it looks like. It's in black crayon, and it's either a giant marrow with warts along the underside, or a hearse. ‘I don't really want to go,' I say to her, ‘but I've got a big case starting next week.'

‘But it's Saturday.'

‘I know, and I'm as sorry as you are, believe me.'

‘But then I've got no one to play with. Laura just tells me to go away, she's got homework to do, and Toni'll be here later, and they'll just shut the door and giggle all afternoon.'

‘Kat, if I could play with you, I would. You know that. Why don't you go and play with Yogi?'

‘Yogi's dumb.'

‘Or Grandma Vera. You could play cards.'

‘Grandma Vera hardly plays at all any more. I tried to play Snap with her the other day, and she can't understand the cards even.
And
she kept stopping, so I had to put her cards on the pile as well as mine, and it gets boring.'

‘Well, I don't know, Kat.'

‘And she doesn't even want Yogi any more. I keep giving him to her, but she doesn't want him.'

‘What does she say?'

‘Once I said, ‘‘Here's Yogi, Grandma,'' and she just said she didn't like yoghurt.'

‘Maybe she misheard you.'

‘She won't even pat or stroke him any more.'

‘Kat, I'm trying to concentrate on these papers.'

There's silence for a whole minute apart from the scrape of crayon on paper, while the marrow acquires a black vine, or the hearse crepe streamers.

‘And anyway, why hasn't Grandma Vera gone to the home yet, so the baby can fit in the flat?'

‘The baby won't be needing her flat. The baby'll live in the house with us. I think Miriam has other plans for the flat.'

‘What plans?'

‘You'll have to ask her. And anyway Grandma Vera will be going soon enough. I thought you didn't want her to go, you thought she'd be lonely?'

‘That was before. Now she doesn't play or anything, she just sits or lies in bed, and mumbles to herself and rumbles her stomach and makes smells.'

‘You must try and be tolerant, Katie.'

‘I
am.
But she's taking ages, and so's the baby.'

‘It's only two weeks since we had our meeting, remember? And we've had to find a home –'

‘And you have, and it's nice and everything, and she still hasn't gone.'

‘Well that's up to Miriam,' I say.

‘Why do you call her
Miriam
all the time?'

‘Who?'

‘Mum.'

‘Because that's her name.'

‘Yes, but if you're talking to me, you're supposed to say
Mum,
because if she's talking to me she doesn't call you
Philip
–'

‘She does with Laura.'

‘Yes, but not with me, because you're not Laura's Dad, but you're mine.'

‘Okay, okay, so you don't like me calling her
Miriam
?' I say. ‘Is that it?'

‘It means you're always thinking about her about you, and not about her about me.'

‘You what?' I say. Sometimes I have no idea what this child is blithering about.

‘It means …' she starts again.

‘Look, Katie, I
am
trying to get these papers read. The less I do now, the more I'll have to do at the office later. Why don't you go and see if Grandma Vera's awake, or would like some tea? Miriam …
Mum
will be home soon, and she'll probably take you shopping and leave Laura to look after Grandma Vera.'

‘She's taking such a long time,' Katie says. And why does she have to go to the council if it's Saturday?'

‘Counselling, Katie, not the council. She goes on Saturday because she's too busy to go during the week, and normally I'm home then to look after things.'

‘What's counselling?'

‘It's where she talks with a friend. Someone who helps her sort out what she thinks, what she wants to do.'

‘About Grandma Vera?'

‘Yes, and other things.'

‘But I thought we decided that?'

‘Yes, well, we have.'

‘So, what's she deciding then?'

‘I'm not exactly sure.'

‘Doesn't she tell you?'

‘Not everything. Some things are private.'

‘Like church, and confession and things?'

‘Sort of.'

‘If Yogi doesn't go to the home with Grandma, we'll have to send him to the kennels or whatever it is for cats, because he'll only make the baby religious.'

‘He'll what?'

‘With all the cat hairs. They get up your nose and make you –'

‘Allergic, Katie, not religious.'

‘What does
religious
mean?'

‘Katie will you
please
go somewhere else and find something quiet to do until Miriam gets back?'

I watch as she snatches up her paper and crayon and marches off towards Mother's flat.

‘Thank you,' I call after her. ‘Miriam will be back soon.' Though not as soon as Katie.

‘Uh-oh,' I say. ‘You're back.'

‘Grandma Vera won't play. She says she's cold.'

‘Cold? She can't be, it's nearly twenty degrees. Is she up?'

‘No, she's in bed.'

‘And she said she was cold?'

‘Well, she didn't say it, but I could tell.'

‘I'll come down in a minute, Kat. But look, if she's really cold, you could get another blanket for her from the cupboard. You know where they are?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, go on, then.'

‘I don't like to.'

‘Why?'

‘Cos her eyes are open.'

‘Well, of course her eyes'll be open, if she's saying she's cold.'

‘I told you, she didn't
say
it. I just knew.'

‘How did you know?'

‘Because her hand's cold, and she won't move it even when I shake her. And she's staring, and not saying anything.'

‘Oh,' I say then, and stand up. ‘You stay here –'

‘I'm scared here. I want to come with you.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘Yes.'

I take her hand then, which is warm and sticky with life – or maybe it's just crayon – and we go hand-in-hand towards Mother's room.

Miriam

‘I almost didn't come this morning,' I say, as soon as we sit.

‘Oh?' says Jane, and watches my face. And I wonder if she can guess the cranky, combative mood I'm in.

‘Everything's worked itself out,' I say. Resenting the fact that I'm even here in the first place. Indulging myself. Wasting my time. In this cutesy little room, with its cutesy colours, its dinky little pots of blue and grey. When we've
made
the decision, and I should be past all this by now. Should be back at home with Philip and Katie. And Mother. Where I belong.

‘Everything's resolved itself,' I tell her again. Without much assistance from her, I suppose I'm saying. Implying, at least.

‘That's often the way,' is all she says, and I feel a small, sharp spurt of anger against her then. At the smugness of her words. Even the tiny yellow cushions on her chairs look suddenly plump and smug.

‘So why did you come?' she says, still watching my face. ‘If it's all resolved? Why didn't you just ring and cancel –?'

And that's the point.

‘I don't know,' I'm forced to say. And as soon as I say it, I feel my anger leaking away, and something almost like shame seeping in to replace it. Why should I be so angry with Jane, for Christ's sake? Who's only tried to help. I'm behaving like a teenager. Like Laura on one of her worst hair days.

‘That's if everything
is
resolved …' Jane says. And waits.

‘You remember that tiger grin?' I find myself saying. ‘It turned out it
was
only a muscle control thing after all.' I don't know why I'm telling her this. Perhaps it's simply my way of making up. Of offering a kind of apology. ‘So all that time I assumed she was baring her teeth at me …'

‘She was actually just trying to smile?'

‘If I massage her lip for a second or two, the spasm or whatever it is goes away, and then there's just this normal, pleasant smile. And …'

‘And what –?'

It's partly
this
I'm resisting, this dialectic that the two of us, Jane and I, lock into. So easily. And yet at the same time I want it. So that in a strange way it's actually myself I'm fighting.

‘I've begun to remember it,' I tell her.

‘The smiling?'

‘I've begun to remember there was more of it than I thought, but that it was always sad somehow.'

‘Could that be why you don't remember it?'

‘You mean I've preferred to remember her as oppressive, as overbearing? Rather than sad?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Jesus, Jane, you can be so smug sometimes.'

There I've said it.

Though I might just as well not have bothered.

‘This decision you've made,' she says, as if I hadn't spoken. ‘To get more intensive care for her … ?'

‘To put her in a home,' I say. ‘Let's not beat around the bush.'

‘If you like,' she says calmly. ‘Though
putting her in a home
has such a punitive feel about it. It sounds like you're still blaming yourself.'

‘And
you
sound,' I say, ‘just like Laura, my daughter. That's what she said to me: ‘‘You'll find some way of punishing yourself, Mum.'' '

‘Breathe, Miriam,' she says then.

‘What –?'

‘You're holding your breath.'

‘Am I?'

‘Let it go,' she says. ‘You swim, don't you? Then imagine you're swimming.'

‘This is crazy –'

‘Don't talk. Just breathe,' she says. ‘Swim.'

I take a breath. Another. Deliberately look around. Not just to calm myself. But to break her gaze. And after a moment or two, my eyes stop sparking, and the room starts to exert its spell again. Through the softness of its colours. The fineness of Jane's things. Her pottery. Books. Wildflowers. My eyes rest on the dark, polished wood of her shelves, the picture rail that runs on all sides of the room. Such an old room. Such an old house. Everything in it so fine, so well cared for. And I have a sudden intuition then. About Jane. About something impossibly sad. Some intuition that tells me that she's been through the storm. And that at the time this space was her shelter, the eye of it for her.

And I want to ask her so much then. But again she's too quick, cutting me off before I can begin.

‘So,' she says. ‘You've chosen a nursing home that you're satisfied with?'

‘It's just ten minutes from home. It's on the same bus route as the girls' schools, so they can visit whenever they like.'

‘That's great. So when …?'

‘Soon,' I say.

While she looks.

‘Soon,' I say again.

‘Have you told her? Told Mother?'

‘Yes.'

‘And?'

‘She doesn't understand.'

‘Does she say anything?'

‘Just the same old thing. ‘‘Home, now,'' she says. ‘‘Home, now.'' But it doesn't mean what Laura thinks it means.'

‘Which is?'

‘That she's giving us permission in some way. But it's not. It's just a ritual phrase, like others she's got. Like
That's a good idea
or
Good girl, good girl
when she's with Katie or
Bad girl, bad girl
for herself …'

‘And these, you think, have no meaning for her?'

‘Well, not the meaning we attach, that we'd like to see in them.'

‘Okay,' Jane says. ‘So let me get this clear. You've made the decision to … put your mother in a home, you've found a home that's satisfactory, you've told her, but you haven't decided when?'

‘That's right.'

Jane waits.

‘Well,' I say, ‘there's no need to look at me like that. It'll be soon, I've said that, a week perhaps.' Jane sits without speaking. ‘A matter of days,' I say. And then I can't stand her smartarse expression a second longer. ‘It's
my
fucking mother,' I say.

‘Yes,' she says. ‘It is your fucking mother. So what's stopping you from putting her in a home?'

I'm set back on my heels by this. The sudden, unambiguous toughness of this.

‘She's not well,' I say. ‘I told you about the barbecue, about what happened after the barbecue – she's not recovered from that. I just want to see her recover first. Get a little stronger.'

‘So you're not putting your mother in a nursing home until she's well? She's too sick to go into a nursing home?'

‘I've told you,' I shout at her. ‘We've made the decision. It's
made
.'

‘Is it time for some tea?' she says.

* *

‘What frightens me most …' I say. And somehow over tea, through the simple ritual of tea, of pouring, and then of waiting and offering, without speaking, Jane and I have found touch again. ‘Is seeing her vanish.'

‘Her memory, you mean? Watching the slate being wiped clean?'

‘Yes.'

‘And part of you with it?'

‘It's terrifying,' I say ‘I know in one sense memory's just a storehouse – what did you call it, a lumber room? Bits of this and that, most of it of no importance. But what if you didn't have it? What if I were Mother's age, and didn't know who Laura was, or Katie, didn't remember their names, their births? Not remembering them being born? I don't think I could bear that.'

‘Some people might say that, in your mother's condition, it scarcely matters.'

‘That's what Laura thinks,' I say ‘But she also thinks that Mother
knows,
that she knows what's wrong with her, and she's as terrified in knowing it as I am looking on. I mean, it's not just things, names or events, it's your whole identity. We
are
our memories, aren't we? And if that's taken away – what are we then, but some sort of animal? I'd never want to be like that …'

‘Because you'd
know,
or because you wouldn't want others to see you like her? To pity you? To feel disgusted perhaps?
Terrified,
did you say?'

‘All of that, I suppose. Just the thought of vanishing like that. It's a kind of death in life, isn't it?'

‘And part of
you
is going too? In her forgetting, part of your identity is vanishing too?'

‘Yes.'

‘The Greeks have a comforting way of thinking about it.' ‘The
Greeks –
?'

And I know from the reassuring way she smiles at me, just how startled I must have sounded.

‘Oh, not the modern ones,' she says. ‘They're just as puzzled by it all as the rest of us. But some of their forebears …'

‘Classical Greece?'

‘They believed it was at
birth
that our minds were washed clean, stripped of memory, made empty and forgetful.'

‘And this life is an illusion?'

‘Yes. And at death we re-enter the fields of memory. It's rather a lovely way of looking at things, don't you think?'

‘Yes.'

‘Even if one can't believe it …'

We sit then, and think for a moment about this. Both of us knowing that this is the last time we'll meet.