Lilian's Story (25 page)

Feeding the Animals

When Father came to visit, or taunt me, in the loony-bin, I could only copy Edith, who was like plasticine and would stay in whatever arrangement you put her. I sat, or slumped, on my chair while Father's voice filled the small visitors' room with authority. It was easy to see how sane he was when he asked me loudly about the food and how often the sheets were changed, using only loud simple words as if I had lost my vocabulary as well as my mind.

I lost everything with Father and became a collection of cells held together in an envelope of skin, propped upright in a chair. During those visits I did my best to become stone, or sky, or anything that could go on living its own silent life when everyone thought it was dead. Father seemed to have vanquished me, but I knew I was biding my time.
I am biding my time
, I said to myself behind my impermeable envelope of skin, the same way I had consoled myself with the thought that
there is too much f lesh
for him now
, years before. I knew that I had a head start on Father, that I was young and strong with years of nourishment and walking, while he was old, or would be soon, and was weakened, under that brittle carapace of his, by all his underground passions.

Mother did not come to visit me in the loony-bin.
Your mother is a trifle indisposed
, Father boomed. I could see him believing his story as he invented it.
Your mother has
been affected by the heat, and is gathering her strength.
I was not a satisfactory listener for his story, sitting so placidly on my chair, and I watched him invent more and more outlandish details.
Your mother has taken up epistemology
, Father said and waited for me to react.
Your mother is thinking of taking the veil.
Your mother is becoming fluent in Swahili.
I continued to sit, so that Father finally hissed,
You are like a cow, Lilian, sitting
fat-uddered on that chair.
While he glared I made up my own versions of Mother from what I had seen, and soothed myself while Father's voice brayed on, soothed myself remembering the gold on the edge of Mother's little notebook and the way her hair blew in wisps around her face, forgotten, if the ferry looked as if it might break its own record across the bay or if the right number of gulls was in the sky at the same moment.

My Other Visitor

My brother John had not grown up to have a twelve-piece brass band of his own. He had grown up to be a stranger who sifted the ruins of lives and houses and looked for things that might mean something. It was a job in which he could be silent, as he preferred, a lot of the time, and when he questioned the relatives or the owner of the burned house or the wrecked car, his silences and his closed indifferent face often led people to make confessions they did not intend.
They want me to care
, John had explained on one of his visits.
I have given it some thought, and I feel I am right.
His eyes were far away behind the thick lenses and the dark frames, and his smooth face expressed nothing. I had nothing to confess, but it was almost tempting to invent something to make his face listen.
They want me to care
, John said again,
so they will say anything, even the truth.
John was a loyal brother, although he could not care about things, and brought me a chocolate cake in a box once a month when he visited.

For a while I pretended to Jewel and the others that he was
my sweetheart
, and basked in their envy, but Esther, who was too clever for her own good, had asked me one day while I was busy eating, and not thinking of anything but the next mouthful,
What is his name, Lil, that cake man, John
who?
and through a mouthful of potato I said
John Singer, of
course
, before I realised. They all thumped me and pulled my hair until I nearly brought up my potato, and Riser had to bang some heads with a spoon.

John was a loyal brother. He sat with me for an hour or two once a month, and told me about fires and unlikely deaths. He cared about the truths of these obscure situations, and cared about playing his tuba with the Salvation Army, but that seemed to be all. At the end of his visit each time he touched my shoulder but did not kiss or embrace me.
Keep
well, Lil
, he said, and walked away down the path, skirting Esther, who had decided he could be her beau, since he was my brother, and made rubbery kissing noises at him until he reached the gate. Those cakes filled their boxes, oozed cream, were sickening with so much icing and jam. All John's buried love surfaced in those gaudy cakes.

The First Goodbye

I had been primping myself behind the wash-house when they came to find me. As my hair dried in the sun I wound it around my finger and wondered if I could have ringlets. Without a mirror it is possible to be anyone, and for the moment I was Ursula, with smooth brown ringlets and a smile that enchanted. I sat behind the shed on a box, with my ankles crossed as Mother had taught me, and waited for my prince.
There will be someone for you, one day
, Mother had told me over and over, because she was a kind woman and always hopeful of a miracle. Feeling my hair glossy around my finger in the sun, I had to let a tear or two slide for the way hope was unquenchable in some hearts, so I was crying, and thinking of Mother when they came to find me. They took me into the office where their white soles squeaked on the lino at every step, and squeaked me over to a chair.
You have a sit-down there
, they said, and fussed so that I knew something was up and began to cry again, and my smooth curls would not comfort me in this cold room that smelled of floor wax.

They tried to break it to me gently. I can see that now, but I sat with tears already drying on my face and did not understand, while they spoke to me of
angels
and
the higher
service.
Their voices became more penetrating as I continued to be stupid, and rang in the small polished room until the sound beat in my ears like someone attacking me and I could not separate any of the words.
What? What?
I asked, and covered my ears with my hands, and forgot about my curls, but wished they would stop shouting at me about heaven and let me go back to the sun. I tried to stand, but they pushed me back into the chair and I knew better than to resist.
She is shocked, poor thing
, the new nurse said, but Riser shouted,
Bullshit, she is just stupid
, and shook my shoulder.
Lil
, he shouted into my face, so that I could see the way the wings of his nose moved when he spoke.
Lil, your mum is
dead, see?
he shouted, and I understood at last, and would rather have gone on failing to understand.
Here, Lil
, the new nurse said, and gave me a handkerchief to blow my nose on, but I crushed it into a ball and put it in my mouth because I wanted to keep something in. There were words inside me for Mother, words that had waited for me to find the right time to say them to her, even just a word of goodbye, but I wished to keep them inside now. I had not said them to Mother when I saw her last, standing in her dressing-gown on the steps, anxious about the newspaper, and I would keep them forever unsaid.
Get out of that, Lil
, Riser yelled, and squirmed his fingers into my face until he had succeeded in pulling the handkerchief out, and the new nurse stood looking pale because she had not seen an
attempted self-destruction
before, and Riser showed her how to tie the tapes of the vest, although it was easy because I did not even think about resisting.

It was not for Mother that the tears flowed all day and fell on the grey canvas, but for the way everything passed and nothing was the way anyone had hoped.
There will
be someone for you
, Mother had said, and had straightened the blue satin sash round my thick waist and told me,
You
look very nice, Lilian
, and never believed when they told her I spent my time up a tree. Mother had stood feeling the gritty back of a threadbare stuffed donkey, and
watched the
birdie
and giggled later, after the photographer had tried to kiss her in the darkroom, and had not thought that she would end up holding a stop-watch and wondering why her daughter was the way she was.
Mother
, I shouted,
Mother,
it was not your fault!
I shouted until my voice cracked, trying to reach her, until Riser came and threatened me with the needle if I did not stop my
bloody bellyaching.

When I was calmer I cried ordinary wet tears, quietly, with decorum, and they undid me from the vest.
My mother
died recently
, I practised saying, with dignity, and told them in the ward, proudly, because such things did not happen often.
There has been a death in the family
, I said, and Jewel clasped her hands and shook her head, forgetting words as she often did, but May shrieked,
Who was it kicked the bucket,
Lil dear?
and I heard myself say,
My father
, and could not stop it, or go back, so I still had the secret of Mother's death for myself. Ruby made me an armband from a black sock and looked solemn as she put it on for me, but the sock was tight and could not be forced any further up than my forearm and seemed wedged there forever. Ruby became red in the face and her mouth began to open and close until she was straining at the sock and yelling,
Get up there, you bloody cow
of a bloody thing
, and everyone was laughing. Under cover of all the shrieking and crowing I could cry a few more tears for my dead mother, who would never know now if there was finally someone for her hopeless daughter, and whose scent of lavender water and camphor would fade from all her things and only come to life when I sat in the sun, smoothing a curl around my finger, remembering her.

The Cynosure of All Eyes

In the face of death we have only ourselves. I would have liked to spend a day or two staring into a mirror, discovering myself in the space behind my eyes. But there were no mirrors in this place. Loonies are not encouraged to admire themselves or even remind themselves who they are. Loonies are encouraged to look outside themselves.
Snap out of yourself
, Riser bellowed at anyone he saw daydreaming too peacefully over basketwork, and although we watched for our reflections in each other's eyes, not much of an image could be seen there. But in the absence of a mirror I discovered my silhouette and decided I could fall a little in love with that shape on the wall. My curves in silhouette had the best kind of substance and belonged together well.
Look
, I would shout when they locked us in too early at night.
Look at the sexpot!
I cried, capering naked, watching my shadow dance for me. Jewel was shocked, for the Blessed Virgin Mary was of course a lady and did not know what to do about such a lot of exposed flesh, but little Babs, who sat sucking her toes when allowed to, became excited, and leaped over the beds towards me making noises like a pup on a leash, and could not be persuaded to admire the shadow rather than the substance.
Oh, Lil, you think you are Easter
, said Dolly the German, who was as big as I was, but more square than round, and who had never quite got the hang of English.
Forever sliding yourself
, she said,
like Persissus.
I agreed with her flat face, like an Eskimo's,
Yes, Dolly, I think I am Christmas
and Easter and my birthday all at once, and I am!
Dolly thought it was her we were all laughing at, and returned to the invisible knitting that kept her so busy, too busy to talk as a rule, and I was free to admire my silhouette some more, and saw that when I stuck out my behind and reached up towards the ceiling with one hand my shadow was not unlike that silver woman that had held up the lamp in Father's study. If I sucked in some of my belly I could believe I was young and slim and lovely, and had no interest in mirrors now, for they had never been as kind to me as my shadow was.

Rescue

I was pasty with loony-bin food by the time Aunt Kitty saw me, and fatter, naturally. Exercise was not encouraged here, and although I walked miles around the square of walled garden, pretending it was bush, it was not the same as my path along the headland. It was not even as interesting as Allambie Crescent. I fought it, but the soles of my feet became soft, the calluses peeled off in layers like a bad sunburn or bark at a certain time of year, and left my soles pink, soft, incapable of even a few steps over stones and twigs. Oh, I had fought. They had held me down, Riser and whatever other nurse was nearby, and forced my shoes onto my feet, but I had struggled and struggled and undone the laces as soon as they left me. But a few days in the vest taught me that they would always win and I tried in the end to be philosophical about my soles.
I will grow
my own soles again one day
, I whispered in private to Jewel,
but
just now I am baring my soles.
I laughed, because I was the only one to see the joke, and Jewel looked surprised with all the muscles of her face and said,
Goodness, Lil, I did not know you
was religious. In that case you will be interested to know I have been
fucked by God.

Aunt Kitty did not ask to see my soles, but exclaimed at my unhealthy look.
Sugar, Lil, wicked sugar
, was the first thing she said when she saw me. Aunt Kitty herself was a person of very high colour that day, and her hands shook as she rearranged the clothes hanging from her thin shoulders, but she was a person of authority. Riser did not laugh, even when Aunt Kitty stumbled in the doorway, and when she turned to him and said in a dignified way
,
Thank you, nurse,
Riser did not snicker as he did when I spoke, but nodded and left. Money had changed hands, I could see that.
Sugar, Lil, it shows in your face, they are poisoning
you with sweet tea
, Aunt Kitty exclaimed. But she took my hands, even though she sounded so stern, and kissed me hard so that I could smell the moth-balls and the whisky.
You should not be here, Lil, consorting with lunatics.
I would have liked to tell Aunt Kitty that I had nothing against a lunatic or two.
I am not all that sane,
I would have said,
and
anyway they are pleasant enough folk, most of them.
But I did not want to confuse Aunt Kitty, who had come to rescue me. I could see the zeal in her red cheeks.
You are not a child
now,
Aunt Kitty said rather too loudly, so that I was afraid Riser would come and see how excited she was. We were not permitted to become excited without running the risk of the vest.
Albion has no right to lock you up
, she shouted, and I nodded and said,
Yes, yes, yes
, trying to stay placid myself and encourage calmness in her. Aunt Kitty's eyes became alarmingly small and full of cunning.
He is afraid
of me
, she said.
He has always suspected that I would like to walk
down George Street as naked as the day I was born.
It was hard to imagine twig-like Aunt Kitty naked, but the idea of George Street responding was an exciting one.