The Mothers' Group (14 page)

But she didn't have the words, and now was not the time.

She had the rest of her life to show him.

‘Thank you, Gordon,' she said simply.

*

They were married on a Monday afternoon deemed auspicious by Pak Tulu, a Hindu priest contracted by Jono to conduct the ceremony. Once Ibu Margono had recovered from the shock of a
bule
proposing to Made, she did everything she could to help. In fact, she became quite proprietary about it, as if
she
was personally responsible for the relationship. Much to Made's amazement, she offered them free use of the resort's largest function room and access to catering.

The floor-to-ceiling windows in the function room overlooked the stretch of beach on which Made had met Gordon ten months earlier. The room was too spacious for the small number of guests gathered to witness the ceremony: her mother, father and Komang, her aunt, uncle and Ketut, her grandparents, Jono Sugianto, Ibu Margono and several cleaning staff rostered on that day.

The ceremony marked Gordon's conversion to Hinduism before progressing to the more complex marriage ritual. Pak Tulu recited blessings and made several offerings, before sprinkling them both with holy water. The tinkling of a silver bell signalled the completion of the ritual, and a dour official from the Civil Registry Office stood up to complete the required documentation. With the formalities concluded, they shared a modest meal of rice, satay chicken and sweet cakes.

Later that evening, Made and Gordon stood outside Cottage 12 and said goodbye to their guests. The first stars had begun to appear in the darkening sky.

Komang hugged Made. ‘Be brave, sister,' she whispered. ‘You have a good husband.'

Her mother stepped forward and kissed her on both cheeks.

‘You are a good girl, Made.'

For a moment, Made's resolve wavered. Why was she forgoing the life and family she loved, to marry a man so much older than her? The opportunities of a distant land seemed far removed from the comforts of the world she knew. She clung to her mother and kissed her, breathing in her sweet, familiar smell. Then her father stepped between them.

‘Leave them now,' he commanded, motioning her mother away.

Gordon shook her father's hand and then took hers, leading her over the threshold.

As Gordon closed the door behind them, Made caught a glimpse of her mother. She stood motionless, staring out over the ocean, like a stone sentinel on a seaside temple.

The first thing Made noticed about Australia was the light. It was March, the beginning of autumn, yet there was a sharp, crystalline quality to the light that made her squint. As they drove from Sydney airport to Gordon's home near the sea, her skin seemed to tighten in the cool, dry air. She stared out the taxi window, wondering where all the people were. It was mid-morning on a Wednesday—why were the roads so empty? Cars and trucks moved at high speed along the motorway, but she couldn't see a single motorcycle.

The baby shifted inside her and Made patted her stomach. It's alright, little one. This is the beginning of our new life together.

Gordon, who was seated in the front passenger seat, turned and smiled at her.

‘What do you think of Sydney?' He gestured towards the cityscape streaking past her window, shiny silver buildings jutting into an impossibly blue sky.

‘It very neat,' she replied. ‘Air smelling new.'

He laughed. ‘We don't have much pollution here.'

It had been eight months since their marriage. Gordon had returned to Australia not long after their wedding, flying back to Bali three times for work. Each time he returned to Australia, he left a mobile telephone with her and called every day. Although Jono Sugianto had lodged her permanent residency application the week after their marriage, the process had taken much longer than expected. She'd kept her cleaning job in the meantime, returning every week to the village to spend her day off with her family.

The baby had been growing inside her for seven months when, at last, Gordon flew into Bali and announced that Jono Sugianto had finalised her Australian visa.

Saying goodbye to her mother and Komang was the hardest thing she'd ever done.

‘When will you return to Bali?' her mother had whispered as they embraced for the last time.

‘I don't know,
Bu
.'

‘You must come back for the one-hundred-and-five-day ceremony, for the baby's sake. Promise me, Made.'

Made had nodded.

And then her mother had waved them off, tight-lipped with the knowledge that her first grandchild was being spirited away to another world.

Made continued to stare out the window of the taxi. This landscape was so different, its people utterly foreign. She touched her stomach and remembered her mother's face, pale and careworn, as Made and Gordon had left the village.

Whatever the gods deliver to me in Australia, she thought, I must make this separation from my family worthwhile.

‘It's called a haemangioma,' the paediatrician said, pointing to a mottled red swelling above the baby's lip. Wayan was only four hours old, but Made had never felt so deeply connected to anyone, anything. It was as if she'd suddenly discovered a part of herself she'd forgotten, revealed in the flesh of another. She instinctively understood the terrain of Wayan's body, from the chubby folds around his ankles and wrists, to the swollen red diamond obscuring his upper lip. The first time she'd seen it, lying on her back in the maternity ward, she'd kissed it fervently, reverently.

‘It's a collection of abnormal blood vessels that form a lump under the skin. We don't really know why they occur, but in eighty per cent of cases, they resolve by school age.'

Made looked to Gordon for clarification. He shrugged, indicating his own ignorance of the matter. Made shifted her weight on the hospital bed. The delivery had been long, with Wayan's head almost too large for her pelvis. This was often the case for Asian women, the midwife had said, especially those married to Caucasians. In the end, the obstetrician had used forceps.

‘In Wayan's case,' continued the paediatrician, ‘with a haemangioma of the lip, it's more likely to become ulcerated due to the friction of wet surfaces rubbing together. You'll probably have trouble feeding him. We'll need to get you some extra support. Where do you live?' The paediatrician scanned her chart. ‘Freshwater?'

Gordon nodded.

‘They've got a good baby health centre up there, so make sure you use it for health checks, mothers' groups, that sort of thing.'

Made watched Gordon listening to the paediatrician. He would relay it all to her later, she knew, in a mixture of Indonesian and English. She lay back against the pillows and looked over at Wayan, asleep in his bassi–nette next to her bed. She knew what her family would say about his facial defect: that it was the karmic consequence of some wrongdoing in a previous life. She'd always been a devout Hindu, but watching Wayan now, she simply couldn't accept that he was anything but perfect.

‘I'm also going to ask one of our paediatric surgeons to take a look at Wayan when he's six months old,' the doctor told them. ‘At that point the haemangioma will be as big as it's likely to get, and he'll be able to make an assessment of treatment options, including whether surgery is required.'

The doctor turned to Made. ‘Many women find it difficult to adjust to their child's appearance as the haemangioma grows larger, especially if people stare or make comments.' He pushed a leaflet into her hands. ‘This should help.'

Made read the words at the top of the leaflet:
Bringing up a child whose
face looks different.

‘Thank you, doctor.'

She looked at Wayan.
I think you're perfect.
She was grateful that he had been born in Australia, where the medical system was vastly superior. Had he been born in her village, a doctor would not have been present. And then what would have happened, given the trouble she'd had? No forceps, nothing. She shivered at the prospect. The disfigurement on Wayan's lip wasn't life-threatening. It could have been much, much worse.

The paediatrician stood up. ‘I'll ask one of the nurses to get a lactation consultant to come and see you shortly.'

She nodded.

Gordon accompanied the paediatrician to the door and they stood outside the room, speaking in low voices.

Made swung her legs over the bed and stood up. She bent over Wayan, wrapped in a blue cotton blanket in his bassinette.

‘You are the most handsome boy in the whole world,' she whispered.

Wayan's dark eyes moved in her direction and then, suddenly, he began to cry.

‘Oh sweet one,' she soothed. ‘Don't cry. Are you hungry?'

She lifted Wayan from the bassinette and brought him to her chest. She'd seen it done in the village a hundred times before. Her breasts had become full and taut in the past twenty-four hours. Now they oozed a thick yellow colostrum.

As she pressed him against her breast, Wayan began to suck noisily. She smiled at the sound, and the not-unpleasant sensation of his mouth tugging on her nipple.

‘That's it, Wayan. Drink.'

She settled back onto the pillow and watched Wayan as he suckled. He was so vulnerable, yet so strong. Born of her body, yet destined for his own path in life. It was such a privilege to be charged with his care, and such a responsibility. She thought of her own mother, who had toiled so hard for their family, and the thousand small sacrifices she must have made along the way. Made resolved to send a letter to Komang just as soon as she was out of hospital, asking that she read it aloud to their mother. Sharing with her mother the one thing she'd learned, as she'd pushed Wayan out of her body: that having a baby was like falling into God.

On the afternoon they returned from hospital, the first thing Made did was make an offering at the small shrine she had fashioned in the northeast corner of the backyard. The shrine looked incongruous, a tower of red bricks stacked between the garage and the fence bordering the neighbour's property. It had been quite a feat to construct at eight months pregnant. One day while Gordon was at work, she'd moved the bricks one by one from an untidy pile near the barbecue. After selecting an auspicious corner of the garden, she laid the bricks across each other, creating four sturdy columns. Then she poked around Gordon's shed, and found a length of wire mesh and a stepladder. Finally, she took from her suitcase a black and white checked
poleng
cloth and a bamboo parasol. She wrapped the cloth around the base of the columns, before positioning the open parasol in the mesh at the very top of the shrine.

It had been a source of comfort while she was in hospital knowing that the shrine was there, awaiting her return.

‘I thank the ancestors for baby Wayan now,' she announced to Gordon, then padded out into the backyard.

It was late afternoon and a sliver of crescent moon hung low in the sky. This same moon watched over her family in Bali, she knew, yet it looked different, somehow. She patted Wayan in the sling, his body snuggled against hers. Then she lay out the items she'd taken from the kitchen: a sweet biscuit, a handful of rice and several incense sticks. Using the broad leaves of a paperbark tree that stood on the southern side of the yard, she set about fashioning a basket. She placed the biscuit and the rice in it, sprinkling them with the soft white petals of a flowering plant that grew near the back door. Camellia, Gordon called it. She liked the softness of the word. If they were ever blessed with a daughter, it would make a lovely name.

She stood before the shrine and pressed her hands together at her forehead, quietly murmuring her prayers of thanks. Sweet incense wafted across her, the heady scent of her homeland. She imagined the earth pulsating beneath her, rich with worms and rotting leaves, the soil simultaneously decomposing and renewing itself. Like all of us, she thought. Living and dying at the same time.

She felt her body loosening, becoming lighter, until she was floating in the comfortable darkness behind her eyelids. Suddenly she saw the face of an old woman; the holy woman she had encountered on the beach in Sanur.

‘Excuse me.' A sharp voice disturbed her prayers.

Made opened her eyes, disoriented. A head hovered above the wooden fence to her right. Then a neck appeared, and two arms over the fence. The face of a middle-aged woman peered at her. Her neighbour, Mrs Carter, in all likelihood. Gordon had mentioned her, but Made hadn't seen her in the three months since her arrival.

‘Hello, I am Made.' She smiled at the woman, then looked down into the sling. ‘This is my boy, Wayan. We come from hospital today.'

‘And what exactly is
that
?' The woman pointed at the shrine.

‘I . . . pray,' explained Made. She wasn't sure why the woman seemed irritated.

‘Well,' said the woman, ‘in Australia, we pray in
churches
.' The woman glared at Made.

Suddenly Gordon was at her side.

‘Mrs Carter,' he said, his tone genial. ‘I've been meaning to introduce you to my wife, but I haven't seen you lately. Have you been away?'

The question caught her off guard. ‘I had a spell in the country with my sister. She hasn't been well.'

‘I'm sorry to hear that,' said Gordon. He placed a hand on Made's shoulder. She instantly felt better.

Mrs Carter looked from Gordon to Made.

‘Well, I was just telling your
wife
that this isn't the sort of neighbourhood that's . . . all that
used
to foreign ways.' Her eyes narrowed. ‘Goodness, she looks
young
. She could almost be your daughter.' A smile played at her lips.

Gordon stared at the woman for a moment, as if he might say something. Then he put his arm around Made and ushered her back to the house.

He shut the door with unusual force.

Made sat on the sofa and put Wayan to her breast. Her heart was hammering. She hadn't fully comprehended Mrs Carter's words, but her expression had said it all. She wasn't welcome here, even in Gordon's backyard.