Australia Day

by Melanie Cheng

  Motherhood has been good to Bea. It’s calmed her. For a while it even helped her relationship with Edwina. But recently things have taken a turn for the worse. I can hear the late-night arguments through my bedroom wall. Hushed accusations followed by long, weighty silences. I don’t interfere. Except to take Sebastian away and give them some time alone.

  Today we’re at Merri Creek and Sebastian is chasing a butterfly. He’s running in circles, following the winged creature from branch to branch, flower to flower. I lay a blanket on the grass and get down on my knees.

  ‘Pa?’ Sebastian says, bored with the butterfly.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are you married?’

  I smile. I can never predict what will come out of his little mouth.

  ‘Used to be.’

  He plays with a pair of ladybirds in the grass.

  ‘Who are you married to?’ he says, looking up at me.

  ‘I’m married to your grandma,’ I say. ‘Grandma Lola.’

  ‘Grandma Lola.’

  A jogger runs past us, his German shepherd in tow. They pant loudly and in unison.

  ‘I’m thirsty,’ says Sebastian.

  I reach into the bag Bea has packed for us and, sure enough, there is a box of Ribena—Sebastian’s favourite—inside. He takes the first few sips thirstily.

  ‘Pa?’

  ‘Yes, my cheeky monkey?’

  He laughs. I love to see him laugh.

  ‘What was Grandma Lola like?’

  I think of her. I think of her perfect white skin and her pale blond hair. I think of her sitting by the fire in the front room of our house, lost in one of her books. I think back to the photo in the hallway—a moment of freedom, her hair loose and flying, her soft mouth stretched into a smile.

  ‘You know the butterfly you were chasing before?’

  ‘Yep,’ Sebastian says, and nods his head vigorously.

  ‘Your Grandma Lola was like that.’

  ‘She was beautiful like the butterfly,’ he says. It is not a question but a statement. I look down at the two ladybirds fornicating in the grass.

  ‘Yes. So very beautiful.’ But he’s gone. Disappeared into the bushes, chasing another butterfly.

  *

  When we get home the air is thick with the smell of melted butter. In the kitchen, chocolate chip biscuits cool on a wire rack above the stovetop. Sebastian climbs onto a stool, dips his finger into a mixing bowl. The radio is on, but Bea is nowhere to be seen. I give one of the biscuits to Sebastian and go in search of his mother. I find her, asleep in her bedroom, still wearing her chocolate-smeared apron. Sebastian tries to wake her, but I pull him away, tell him to finish his biscuit. There is a suitcase in the corner of the room, half-packed with Edwina’s clothes and art history books. I lift Bea’s foot, heavy with sleep, and place it with her other foot on the mattress. I motion to Sebastian to help me and together we pick a sheet off the floor and tuck it around Bea’s body.

  They framed her. Now she sits, in thick unpolished wood, above the marble mantelpiece in my bedroom. I objected at first, insisting she wasn’t worth the money, but in truth I was pleased with the finished piece. She looked good. Bea and Edwina kept saying I could sell her, and probably for a good price, too, but I could never part with her. I think even Bea knew that.

  I try not to think back to that day. I try not to remember the disgust smeared across Daniella’s otherwise lovely face. I force myself to forget the red ladder of lines on the soft belly of her arm. Daniella. I never even knew her real name.

  Nowadays, when I look at the drawing, it’s not Daniella I see at all. It’s Lola. It can’t possibly be anyone else, with that long arched neck and easy elegance. And there, too, in the drawing, is Ana—lovely Ana—in the wide, munificent hips. But it’s also Bea. In the wistful, other-worldly eyes. Eyes that no longer accuse me of crimes past, or crimes yet to be committed. Tender eyes. Soft. Like they used to be when she was little. Like they are becoming again now.

  A Good and Pleasant Thing

  Twenty years ago supermarkets didn’t stock Chinese mushrooms. Now they had a whole aisle dedicated to international cuisine. Lebanese, Greek and Mexican on one side, Chinese, Vietnamese and Indian on the other. Mrs Chan hardly ever went to the shops by herself. On Wednesdays her eldest daughter, Lily, took her to Footscray Market to buy fresh vegetables, and every Friday her youngest daughter, Daisy, ordered bulky items, like toilet paper, for her online. But today was her grandson Martin’s twentieth birthday, and Mrs Chan wanted to surprise him—to surprise all of them—by cooking a family favourite. Chinese clay pot chicken and mushroom rice.

  She found the chicken thighs towards the front of the supermarket, cradled in polystyrene. The meat would be days old by now, but it would have to do. In Hong Kong, Mrs Chan would have sent her maid to choose a live chicken at Wan Chai Market and pick it up an hour later—dead, plucked and washed. When the Chan family feasted on the flesh for dinner, the meat would be less than six hours old. That was why the meals Mrs Chan made in Australia would always be poor imitations—bland and watery substitutes for their Hong Kong originals. But today she was heartened by the plumpness of the ginger and the crispness of the spring onions, and on finding a familiar brand of dried Chinese mushrooms she was eager to start cooking.

  It was only once she was waiting in line that Mrs Chan noticed the Australian flags hanging from the ceiling. As she looked around, she realised the entire store was decorated with green and gold balloons. Now she remembered her grandson shared his birthday with an Australian holiday.

  When Mrs Chan reached the front of the queue, the pretty girl behind the counter in the yellow headscarf smiled and said something in English. Mrs Chan shook her head and said ‘No fly buys!’ like her daughter Lily had trained her to do. The girl seemed amused by this, and Mrs Chan wondered if perhaps she had asked her something else. She would never know.

  As she watched her items being scanned and bagged, Mrs Chan turned her attention to the magazine rack. A sea of women with pouty lips and cascading hair returned her stare. They reminded Mrs Chan of the Barbies her granddaughter had played with as a child. Once, long ago, Mrs Chan had been the local bombshell. But that was in the 1960s, and hers had been a real, unspoilt kind of beauty. Her fair skin and high cheekbones had caused a stir among the neighbours, some of the more jealous ones starting a rumour she had Caucasian blood in her.

  There was only one face Mrs Chan recognised amid all the others on the covers of the glossy magazines—a woman with cumquat-coloured hair. When Mrs Chan had first come to Australia, the red-headed woman had been outspoken about Chinese migrants, but thankfully nobody, including the redhead, talked about the Chinese anymore. Now it was all about Muslims—like the pretty girl in the yellow headscarf scanning Mrs Chan’s Chinese mushrooms.

  Not one person offered Mrs Chan a seat on the tram. She was too short to reach the plastic hand-straps and clung to a pole near the door instead. Every so often she glared at the teenager slumped in the seat reserved for disabled people, but the pimply boy was plugged into his phone, oblivious to everything.

  When she arrived home, Mrs Chan soaked the mushrooms. She watched their parched black heads grow round and plump in the warm water. She washed the rice and chopped up all the ingredients. It wasn’t long before the air in the kitchen was thick with the smell of ginger and spring onion. Her mobile rang just as she was unwrapping her precious clay pot—the one she had brought to Australia, cocooned in bubble wrap, in her hand luggage.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Celestial Gardens. Tonight. Six o’clock. For Martin’s birthday.’ Lily, a bank manager, had inherited this punchy way of talking from her father. Wei had been an accountant—full of stress, dead at fifty-three from a heart attack.

  ‘I thought you’d come here, to my house. Like every Sunday.’

  ‘It’s Martin’s birthday, Ma. He’s twenty. He doesn’t want to go to his poh poh’s house for dinner.’

  ‘You could have
told me earlier.’

  ‘I would have…but I thought you’d forget.’

  ‘I’m cooking Martin’s favourite. Clay pot chicken rice.’

  ‘I’ve booked Celestial Gardens. Paid a deposit and everything.’

  Mrs Chan looked at the mushrooms, floating now, in liquid the colour of dishwater. She couldn’t argue with a deposit.

  ‘Besides,’ Lily said, ‘it’s thirty-three degrees. Not clay pot weather.’

  *

  Celestial Gardens was on the first floor of a building in Chinatown. A glass box perched above a Chinese bakery and a registered Apple reseller. It was popular for its dumplings, but Mrs Chan hated it. There were better, more authentic places in suburbs like Box Hill and Doncaster. But Martin had recently moved to the city, to an apartment bought by his mother, and the restaurant was convenient for him. He was going to a bar with his friends after dinner.

  Mrs Chan arrived with her youngest daughter. Daisy was in her early forties and a successful lawyer. In the car she spoke endlessly about a case she had taken on, some high-profile international child custody battle. There had been a current affairs program about it and everything. While proud of her daughter’s success, Mrs Chan didn’t delight in what Daisy did for a living, which was basically profiting, very well, from the failure of marriages. For Mrs Chan, marriage was forever, no matter how excruciating. And she blamed Daisy’s job for her lack of suitors. Because what man in his right mind would want to marry a divorce lawyer?

  Mrs Chan stared through her window as squat weatherboard houses gave way to shiny office towers. It was here in the city that Mrs Chan felt most at home, swaddled by lights and strangers and traffic noise. But there was something underwhelming about the Melbourne CBD—dull and unimaginative compared to the glittering metropolis of Hong Kong.

  At the restaurant Mrs Chan got lost amid a flurry of kisses. She found an empty chair in the corner near a potted plant and collapsed into it. She couldn’t remember exactly when this silly kissing business had begun. The grandchildren had started doing it with their Australian friends, and then one day everybody in the family was joining in. It made Mrs Chan uncomfortable, panicky even. She was always leaning in the wrong way and knocking cheekbones with somebody.

  As a young woman, Mrs Chan would never have imagined she and her family would end up in Australia. She knew nothing about the country, other than that it was once a British colony, like Hong Kong. But then all of a sudden, in the nineties, everybody in Hong Kong was moving to Canada and Australia, nervous about the end of British rule. It made sense for Mr and Mrs Chan to send their children to university in Melbourne.

  From her seat in the corner, Mrs Chan watched her family. There was Lily, hovering around everybody, watching everything. A neurotic creature from birth, Lily had always slept and eaten very little. She grew from a thin, perfectionist child into a thin, perfectionist adult. It was Lily who reminded them all about anniversaries, told them how much money to put in their red packets for Chinese New Year and organised large family gatherings like Martin’s birthday dinner tonight. Lily enjoyed neatness and order and punctuality. That was why Mrs Chan was so surprised when she had married Luke—a balding, pot-bellied English teacher who had been trying to write a screenplay for fifteen years. Mrs Chan didn’t like him—she had the impression he held her daughter back. Luke started things, Lily finished them. Lily made money, Luke spent it. When Luke drifted, Lily steered him back on course. Fortunately Martin took after his mother—despite spending an inordinate amount of time with his chaotic father. Like Lily, Martin was frighteningly intelligent and unforgivingly precise. He could do no wrong in Mrs Chan’s eyes.

  She observed her grandson now. He was smiling and accepting red packets of money. Unlike other boys his age, Martin did not slouch. He held his head high and towered above the rest of the family. Mrs Chan planned on leaving him everything in her will. Martin was her one and only grandson. Rose, her middle child, had already had twelve unsuccessful cycles of IVF, and Daisy was too happy being single to get married. There was a granddaughter in Sydney, too—Martin’s older sister—but she had a tattoo and was probably in a relationship with a woman, and nobody ever mentioned her.

  Rose was chatting to Martin, blushing and laughing and covering her hand with her mouth. She was the quiet one of the bunch. When she was born, the midwife said she had an old man’s face, serious and watchful. She never crawled—instead, for months, Rose had studied Lily running rings around her mother, and then one morning, around her first birthday, she simply stood up and walked. Rose was the smartest of the three girls, but from a young age she had learnt to defer to her bossy sister Lily. Mrs Chan knew that behind her daughter’s solemn look lurked a profound insecurity. Rose had chosen to study pharmacy at university even though her marks were high enough to get into medicine. Soon after graduation she had married David, a plastic surgeon—also from Hong Kong—who offered family discounts for breast implants and answered his phone in the middle of dinner.

  Daisy, the youngest daughter, was the most easygoing. From two weeks of age, she had slept for twelve hours straight every night. Daisy fit into Australia better than the rest of them, saying whatever came into her head and swearing like an Aussie. Mrs Chan watched her now, making her way around the room, telling self-deprecating stories and making everybody laugh.

  Mrs Chan wondered what her husband would think of his daughters if he were alive. No doubt he would be proud. He had only lived long enough to see Lily and Rose finish university. When the girls were growing up, Wei never hid the fact that what he’d really wanted was a son. Mrs Chan could see now that this had only spurred his daughters on.

  She watched Martin excuse himself from the group and navigate between the tables towards her. Her grandson spoke very basic and halting Cantonese. Mrs Chan had spoken it to him as a baby, but when he was older, Martin had always insisted on answering her in English. Nowadays she couldn’t have anything more than a simple conversation with him. But she loved him. She loved how handsome he was. She loved that he had both the double-lidded eyes of his father and the smooth, flawless skin of his mother. He pulled up a chair and sat down beside her. In his funny Cantonese, he thanked her for her gift—a red packet containing two hundred Australian dollars. Mrs Chan waved her hand and smiled and mumbled that it was nothing. He patted her awkwardly on the shoulder.

  Lily yelled at them all to sit down and eat. Martin left his grandmother to join his parents on the other side of the table. The food was ordinary. The pork crackling was chewy, the broccoli was cold and the rice was overcooked. When the meal was finished, Mrs Chan pulled a toothpick from a tiny vase on the lazy Susan and hid her mouth with her hand as she retrieved some broccoli from between her teeth. As always, the plastic surgeon was fiddling with his phone. Daisy was dominating the talk, dipping in and out of Cantonese. Mrs Chan could only catch snippets of the conversation.

  ‘I wouldn’t care if it was on a different day…or called a different thing…so long as we get a public holiday!’

  Lily jumped in then with something in English. Mrs Chan could sense a rift forming between her children. Luke’s red face was becoming redder. Lily was flapping her tiny hands. Mrs Chan was relieved when the plastic surgeon pushed back his chair and stood up.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said in needlessly loud Cantonese. ‘I have to go. An old lady in a nursing home cut her face open.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘She’s eighty-three.’

  Minutes later Martin’s phone rang. His friends were waiting for him downstairs. He said a hurried goodbye. After he had left, Mrs Chan watched him through the restaurant window. She saw him greet his friends. They bumped shoulders and smacked each other on the back. He was a different person with them, rough and masculine.

  Without Martin, there was no point to the gathering. Lily asked for the bill. When it arrived, she and Daisy played tug of war with the docket while Rose stuffed thick wads of cash into her sisters’ expensive handbags. Finally somebody won or some
body else conceded, as they always did, and they all waited by the lift while Rose and Lily went to the bathroom.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t need to use the toilet, Ma?’ Daisy asked, as if talking to a three-year-old. Mrs Chan didn’t want to give Daisy the satisfaction of being right, but she had drunk a lot of jasmine tea, and her bladder had a funny way of misbehaving lately. She slunk off towards the rest rooms.

  Rose and Lily were still in the cubicles when Mrs Chan walked in. As she prepared the toilet seat with layers of paper, Mrs Chan heard the flush of the toilets, followed by the clicking of her daughters’ heels as they walked to the handbasins.

  ‘You know she won’t be able to live in that unit forever,’ Lily said in a low voice. Mrs Chan could barely catch her words over the sound of a tap running.

  ‘I know,’ Rose said, ‘but I’ve been meaning to tell you, David’s applied to Sydney next year for his fellowship.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘So you won’t be around either.’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  They switched to English then, but Daisy’s name was mentioned once or twice in angry tones before their voices were drowned out by the whirr of the hand dryer.

  On the car ride home, Daisy launched into her usual tirade about her sisters. Mrs Chan had heard it all before. Why did Rose put up with that arrogant prick of a doctor? Why did Lily spoil Martin so much? Why did they all have to go along with Lily’s delusion that she was the glue that held the family together? Why didn’t anybody ever point out that Lily had effectively disowned her own daughter? Every so often Mrs Chan nodded or grunted to show Daisy she was still listening, but really she was filling in the gaps in the conversation she had overheard in the toilet at the restaurant. She told herself she wasn’t going to mention it to Daisy. She didn’t want to contribute to any further conflict between her daughters. But when Daisy pulled up in front of her unit, Mrs Chan was bursting to say something. She couldn’t face the thought of going inside to sit alone with those terrible words still spinning around in her head.