We'll Stand In That Place and other stories

by Michelle Cahill

  Mapo Tofu

  The Jewelled Broom that Sweeps Away All Care asked to delay the banquet, insisting on more time to research the production of hand-made pots and glazes. Work on the correct forms of accompanying poetry would take longer still. Suspicious, the Speaker granted a few centuries after consulting with the other teams: Hazelnut Moon, Tropic Corps, Champagne & Finger Limes and the Tintenfisch Orbital, but stipulated a few Jun glazes only and further insisted poetry research and writing should take place concurrently, admonishing the wine-makers and scotch distillers to work on their glassware and song-writing also concurrently.

  The Jewelled Broom are up to something, said the Reader.

  Hmmm, said the Speaker, who’d been distracted for an age by the Banana Question which threatened to derail the entire banquet. No matter what Tropic Corps tried, they could not grow bananas. Producing a hand here or there was not enough: contest rules demanded consistent production and quality. Something wrong with the genetic material, complained Tropic Corps. All sterile, all clones, they won’t grow. Doesn’t matter, said the Reader. Let it go. A few millennia ago none of you could have conceived of a banana. Now you will not rest till you make pudding and ice cream out of them for your banquet.

  Maple Sugar Pie

  The Speaker breathed a sigh of relief, wondering how long the Banana Question would hold out. Still the banquet had to go ahead sometime. The people needed these problems to solve but they also needed to keep moving forward. Getting stuck in the loop of one problem eternally would not solve their larger problem. The sterility of the banana could not save them forever.

  Galaxies are much emptier than atoms

  The Speaker looked at the two humans, representatives of the other people who had once, unknowingly, shared the universe with them so long ago, the woman with pale oval face and straight black hair falling past her knees, the very image of a Heian court lady, and seated by the flowing stream next to her, the dark brown man with even, regular features and thick tightly curled hair.

  Green Papaya Salad

  The woman stared, rapt, at the clouds of cherry bloom glowing in the dusk. The man scooped up one of the wine cups floating past him on the blossom-dotted stream and drank. Reciting a few lines of poetry, he set the cup back on the bubbling water. A silver carp rose to the surface. More wine cups floated past and the people seated all along the banks sipped, recited poetry, nibbled from the array of delicacies and looked up to praise the silver-green wash of the rising Hazelnut Moon.

  The people were in shock at the accomplishment even as they enjoyed an evening more thrilling and sumptuous than they’d ever known. The feat of recreating humans had not been revealed by The Jewelled Broom until that night because they knew the Speaker and the other cohorts would never approve. Still, the Speaker understood their reasoning. These two, and, the Speaker now saw, the array of artfully varying children who’d been created to accompany them (with many shades of skin, textures of hair and subtleties of feature), were the final touch. The banquet’s crowning glory.

  The Jewelled Broom could not be awarded the prize: they had broken every rule of ethics—and yet. The Jewelled Broom had seen that the winding water banquet needed the arbitration and appreciation of its original creators, who must recite poetry and delight in the breeze lit with blooms like snow. It was done and could not be undone. They had achieved the one thing that would forestall Translation for the foreseeable future: they had made The People into parents.

  The Speaker turned to the woman and the man and the children and said:

  Today, gloriously drunk, we no longer know the meaning of unhappiness.~

  * * *

  ~ Ryokan Taigu – Zen monk, hermit, poet

  * Taneda Santoka – Zen monk, poet, beggar

  Somebody’s Baby

  Jenni Mazaraki

  H arry had a pain in the back of his head.

  The nurses sent me in to talk to him because they

  thought it was a psychological thing. It was so slow there. People moved at an entirely different pace to anything I had been used to. I was the new art therapist. I wasn’t meant to have favourites. But I did.

  Harry was in his nineties and I sat opposite him in his tiny little room. This man who I pictured in a lovely big house. With a neatly manicured hedge and white picket fence. I imagined this old man as a young man with his beautiful young wife and their three young daughters. A strong, tanned arm around his wife’s waist. Her floral sundress swishing freely above her calves. Soft leather sandals. Brown.

  Brylcream to slick his hair back. Even on weekends.

  And now, in this room, with its adjoining ensuite. Stainless steel bar next to the toilet and in the shower. Exactly two metres from the place where he now slept every night.

  In this space, I noticed the nightstand with a single picture. A large family in a garden. There were roses and freshly clipped grass. There were smiles and straw hats and arms around shoulders and in the middle of this group was the man and his wife and they were kissing. Eyes closed.

  * * *

  ‘Hello you!’

  Every morning, Harry would greet me with that wide smile. He still had his own teeth and they were good. I’d ask him what his plans were for the day.

  ‘Oh, I’m teaching myself Italian this morning!’

  Harry liked to keep his body and mind active. He devised small challenges for himself, now that big challenges were no longer on the cards. His balance was shot. His heart was no good anymore, in his own words.

  With his CD player and a small textbook, Harry learned a bit of Italian each day, to keep the old brain active, he said. He joined in activities like bocce and morning reading group. The women adored him. I watched as pale cheeks flushed slightly in his presence.

  And he described the strange sensation in the back of his head and he was confused.

  ‘Is this something you’ve felt before, Harry?’ I asked, going through a checklist in my mind.

  ‘No, never.’

  ‘What does it feel like?’

  ‘Like angels fluttering with burning wings.’

  He looked straight at me as though I was someone who could help with his pain. All day long I dealt with people’s feelings and self-expression and giving voice to internal turmoils. And I was terrified that something was very wrong.

  * * *

  Kevin drew hammers. And spanners. Bridges too. He came to art therapy every week with his shirt freshly ironed and his tie neatly knotted. Double Windsor. He stood up tall in a sea of wheelchairs and walking frames. He stood up whenever a lady joined us at the table. He held doors open; he offered seats.

  Sometimes he drooled and didn’t notice. He couldn’t remember the word for ruler and became frustrated with himself and then everyone else at the table.

  ‘Well if you are all so clever, why don’t you tell me the name of this blasted thing?’ Kevin waved the ruler in his hand as proof that the thing existed even if his mind wouldn’t recognise it.

  * * *

  Sometimes I ate what the residents ate. Roast dinners were my favourite. In the staff room I sat with a magazine, while outside in the dining room, the residents sat at tables in groups of four and six, mimicking a time when they would have sat with their families for dinner. Now, they were on school camp forever, eating meals and sitting across from another old person who they might never have met, if it wasn’t for this place.

  * * *

  In his room, I saw Harry raise his hand over and over, as though rubbing the back of his head would ease some of his pain. I saw the wedding ring on his soft hands. It looked like it was made for a different man or for a different time. It hung on his finger. A reminder that he still felt married, even though she was gone.

  Now Harry was regimented to a schedule not of his making. Living in a room smaller than his back shed. Sitting on seats in the shared lounge covered in fabric designed to repel urine.

  A heat washed over my own head, then face, shoulders and my chest grew ho
t with a prickly fear. He wanted something from me, some kind of reassurance.

  * * *

  I started the job two weeks after my baby was scraped out of my womb. After the procedure, the nurse brought me a tray of food.

  ‘You can eat now.’

  She smiled cheerfully, placing the hospital food within my reach as I lay in the bed. I stared at the red jelly with its tightly stretched foil lid. No, I can’t eat, I thought to myself as I smiled weakly and said, ‘Thanks.’

  * * *

  ‘The fish stinks from the head down.’

  Ezra was pointing his finger in the air, for emphasis. We sat at the café on the main road. He ordered a black coffee and I ordered a latte. I watched him reposition the salt and pepper shakers deftly. ‘You can guarantee that when a place is bad, it comes from the top.’ He took a sip of his coffee and grimaced before placing the cup back in its saucer.

  Ezra was new. I met him in the foyer, twenty minutes after he had officially signed the papers to call that place home. I’d just finished facilitating an art therapy session. Walking down the corridor after I’d packed all of the art materials away, I heard an uncomfortable commotion.

  ‘But I just want to go for a walk!’ Three staff surrounded him, blocking his path to the door. Even if Ezra had managed to get past them, the doors wouldn’t have budged anyway. The button behind the desk released the locks.

  ‘No, Mr Jacobs, you are a falls risk, you can’t go outside by yourself. A staff member needs to go with you and we are all busy right now.’

  Ezra wasn’t having a bar of it.

  ‘Excuse me, but I am a grown man, and if I want to go for a walk, then I will most certainly go for a walk.’

  I guessed that he was the sort of person whose language became increasingly polite the angrier he became. His power was his words. I could tell he didn’t think much of the place or the people who worked there.

  ‘Why don’t you go and settle into your room and then someone will go out with you later? Hmmm?’

  Sandra was trying to placate him but it came out all wrong. She had a knack for that.

  ‘No, I will go for a walk now.’

  * * *

  I told Harry that I would check in on him later, but for now, to take it easy and not do anything too strenuous.

  I walked to the nurse’s station and told the nurse in charge that something was wrong with Harry and that I didn’t think it was emotional.

  His CT scan showed a brain tumour. Inoperable. He had a large mass in his brain and I had sat there talking to him about his feelings and memories and was there something that had upset him recently, would you like to talk, I’m here if you want to talk . . .

  I felt his bones. That day in hospital. I don’t think he recognised me. There was none of that cheerful, ‘Well, hello you,’ as I entered his room with a small, unscented bouquet. I had laboured over my choice. What to choose for a man who is dying, who has slipped into a state of otherness and who is unlikely to return? The nurses told me in hushed tones. When the nurses speak like that, you know it’s bad.

  The hospital corridors were covered in green paint. On the walls and ceilings and pipes and air vents, layers and layers of the stuff. The sickly light bounced off the glossy walls and into my face. In his room, I gasped as I watched him writhe in pain.

  ‘Hi Harry, it’s me, Emma. How are you?’ I held the bouquet out to him, childlike.

  ‘Help me, it hurts, I’m in so much pain.’ Harry’s eyes were open but he did not see me. I was warned before visiting that he wasn’t the same. I was warned.

  ‘Oh Harry, I’m so sorry you’re in so much pain.’ My spare hand reached out to him and placed itself gently on his shoulder. He immediately winced and pulled away from my light touch. Tears streamed down the side of his temples and landed on the hospital pillow. I quickly clutched my coat collar in my hand, keen to replace the feel of his stiff hospital gown and his bones.

  He wailed for his mother and my body split in two. We are all somebody’s baby. Held with tenderness by someone at some time.

  ‘I’ll go get the nurse.’ It was all I could offer him. With the nurse in the room, I felt too big and too colourful with my red jacket on. I said goodbye as Harry was soothed by the nurse’s attention and the drugs. I turned around to see Harry’s face relax and counted the bunches of flowers on the shelf in the room. Seven.

  * * *

  It was my job to encourage the residents to attend group activities. I couldn’t manage to get some of them to go to group activities. A group of women sat in the shared lounge near the large painting with the gilded frame and refused to budge. Nola sat near them, but not with them and I caught them making fun of her as I walked past one morning.

  ‘Off with the fairies, that one,’ Bertha sniggered and the other three laughed in unison.

  They knew I had to get them involved or it looked bad for me and for the facility. It would look bad at the audit. So every time I asked them to join in, they sat on their seats and laughed right in my face with their shared joke that I was not privy to.

  I saw the women who didn’t have kids. Some of them didn’t have visitors. Others had cardigans with holes and long chin hairs curling. They had strangers or distant nephews act as power of attorney.

  * * *

  ‘It all works out in the end, doesn’t it?’

  I sat in the back of the church at Harry’s funeral. I felt so small amongst his tall family with their broad shoulders and long legs. They looked like sensible people who never got too worked up about anything. His daughter with impossibly shiny hair read the eulogy.

  ‘Those were his last words before he took one last breath, looked over at us and passed away.’

  * * *

  My baby had died inside my body and I walked the hallways of the aged care facility like I was immune to death. I wasn’t going to be a mother. Not this year. Maybe never. When the heartbeat in my womb stopped, my own heart began a new uncomfortable pace. Staccato.

  It had been too early to tell anyone and so, no one knew. Sonya the music therapist announced at morning tea that she was pregnant and we all congratulated her with happy chatter. Days after her announcement, I was in the storeroom sorting art supplies when Sonya entered and it all poured out. I lost a baby, I said. She patted me on the shoulder and said kindly, ‘I’m so sorry.’ I tried not to look at her pregnant belly.

  * * *

  We took it in turns to go to the funerals. Always had to be a staff member to represent the facility. I couldn’t go to another one after Harry’s.

  His picture was still up in the foyer from when we asked residents to show us your baby photos! Except Harry didn’t have any, so he gave us the photo of himself and his mate at a dance. He was about twenty-two and wearing a tuxedo, for crying out loud. He was all Fred Astaire and Gregory Peck rolled into one. That smile, beaming out from the photo at me every time I walked past. His arm around his friend’s shoulder. Jovial.

  After the funeral, I shook hands gently with Harry’s family and left. Around the corner from the church, I leaned against a cold red brick wall and sobbed. The instant coffee from earlier still bitter in my mouth. I suppressed the urge to vomit.

  I wanted to make things better. I wanted to make things right.

  I started spending my lunch breaks in the unused section of the building. Amongst piled up furniture, abandoned objects and stale air, I sat on the dirty carpet and ate my sandwiches and cried.

  Gathering the objects from the other building became a distraction from the signs that my job was falling apart. Or rather, that I was falling apart. I found embroideries shoved in the back of cupboards and hung them up in the new dining room. I gathered small ornaments of porcelain children and animals, books with the bookmark still left in, unfinished. I redistributed these objects like little ghosts around the new building.

  I asked the residents if they’d like an event to mark Anzac Day. Ada gently took me aside and told me quietly that most people woul
d rather forget.

  It became a ritual. Sit, eat my sandwich, cry, gather objects, return to work. Call bingo, read the news, play bocce, go for a walk with a resident in the garden, pack the art materials away.

  Jodie nudged Paula with her elbow and pointed in my direction. I locked eyes with Paula for a moment before looking down at the armful of dusty objects I was holding. I’d forgotten to re-do my eye makeup.

  With my womb prickling at me all day, my emotions were raw and spilling out, uncontainable.

  I longed to hold my own baby. In my arms they would feel warm and safe and protected. I could not tolerate my life without a child. I wanted my body to produce life. I’d had enough of death.

  * * *

  I became used to the smell of urine. I hardly even noticed it anymore. Out of respect for the residents, I trained myself not to react to the smell and then finally, I was immune.

  We had an education session on handwashing. A group of us were asked into a small room and with the lights off, the health and safety officer used a black light to show us the germs on our hands.

  ‘Look, the art therapist has the cleanest hands,’ she said, incredulous that it could be true, and she flicked on the light and asked me to show everyone how I washed my hands. She watched as I took my time to wash each finger individually before I finally turned off the tap with a piece of paper towel in my hand.

  ‘Is that really how you wash your hands or are you just putting it on for us?’ She was laughing, trying to get everyone else to laugh too.

  She didn’t know that I had developed an insatiable desire to wash my hands at work. But no amount of washing my hands got the death off me.

  That place was all things and nothing. It was a home and a workplace and an entertainment centre. It was a medical centre, a hairdresser’s salon, a restaurant. It was a place for therapy—but not too much. The dementia unit could only do so much, I was told. The moment a resident became unmanageable, they were shipped off to the geriatric dementia unit, a mental health service and that’s where they stayed until their behaviours became, well, manageable again.