I Am Not Esther

by Fleur Beale

  Now where had I heard that before?

  ‘Didn’t you ask what she’d done?’ Jeff asked.

  ‘You don’t ask …’ Miriam and I said automatically.

  ‘And if you do, you do not get told,’ Daniel added.

  Jim nodded. ‘That’s right. But I did ask and I said — but she was sick this morning. How could you cast her out?’ He rubbed his temples. ‘He told us nothing, just prayed and ranted and prayed some more. Mother had been crying and a couple of Elders came round and there was more ranting. But that night when I was getting ready for bed, I dropped my toothbrush and when I bent down to get it, I saw blood splashed on the wall.’

  ‘He’d beaten her up?’ I felt sick in my stomach.

  ‘Yes, he’d beaten her up. I went crazy. Went for him and we had an out and out fist fight and all the kids were screaming and crying.’ He took a breath. ‘But the old bastard wouldn’t tell me anything. In the end, I told him to rub me out of the book too, because I was going after Martha and I left.’

  ‘Did you try to find Mum?’ I asked, my voice wobbling a bit.

  He sighed. ‘Yes, I found her. It took me three days, but I found her. She was in hospital because my dear father had broken her jaw.’ I closed my eyes and my stomach heaved. ‘She wouldn’t tell me why she’d been thrown out. I wanted us to stick together, but she said she already had a job. She was going to live on a farm out the back of Gisborne and be the housekeeper.’ He stared out the lounge windows to where the lights were blinking on in the city below us. ‘She said she’d write, but she never did. We completely lost touch — and now I know why.’

  ‘She’s good at disappearing,’ I whispered.

  ‘We’ll find her this time,’ Miriam cried. ‘Won’t we, Jim?’

  Instead of reassuring me, Jim pushed his cup away and cleared his throat.

  ‘Jim?’ I croaked. ‘What is it? You know something?’

  Nina got up and put her arms around me. ‘Kirby, darling, we know where she is.’ She held tightly to my shoulders. ‘She’s ill, Kirby. She’s here in Wellington, in hospital and she’s very ill.’

  I jumped up. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? I should be there! I should be with her!’

  Pictures of my mother lying still in a hospital bed raced through my head.

  Nina pressed down on my shoulders, making me sit down again. ‘It’s not that sort of ill, Kirby. She’s had a breakdown. She’s in a psychiatric ward.’

  Ten

  MRS FLETCHER FELT IT MIGHT be a possibility, Jim said, so he and Nina asked round the hospitals.

  ‘She’s mad,’ I whispered. ‘My mother’s mad.’

  ‘She’s not,’ Jim said briskly. ‘But she is depressed.’

  Depressed? I didn’t understand. ‘Louisa used to get depressed, but she’d clean all the windows, dig the garden and spend an hour talking with Mum and she’d be okay again.’ Depressed couldn’t mean that she was very ill. Not ill enough to run away and dump me.

  ‘Listen, Kirby,’ Nina said, sitting down beside me. ‘Your mother was found at the airport. She’d been sitting there for around twenty-four hours, just staring into space. She couldn’t tell anyone who she was or where she lived. They took her to hospital and she’s been on medication …’

  ‘You mean drugs?’ I asked in a high, thin voice that didn’t sound like mine. I had this awful picture of my mother sitting in the airport, staring at ghosts.

  Nina grabbed my hand and somebody, Miriam I think, had an arm round my shoulders. ‘She’s a lot better now, but …’ she hesitated.

  ‘But what?’ I was cold and shivering. The arm tightened round my shoulders.

  ‘She seems better, she’s started looking after herself again.’ What did that mean? Nina saw the shock in my face and said gently, ‘When people are as depressed as she was they haven’t got the energy to get out of bed, have a shower, care about how they look. Each morning, they’ve had to persuade her to do all that, Kirby.’

  I heard a howl, like a wounded animal and I noticed that Daniel was looking at me, his eyes full of pain.

  Nina shook my hands, squeezing them hard. ‘Listen, Kirby. She’s come out of that stage now. She’s talking and she’s much better, but they’re worried because they feel some of the improvement is just an act. They think she’s doing it out of will power rather than because she’s better.’

  I knew all about that willpower. I stood up. ‘I want to see her. She needs me. I’ve always looked after her. I have to see her.’

  Jim got up. ‘I’ll take you, Kirby. But — she may not want to see you. You have to be prepared.’

  I stared around at them all. She may not want to see me? Miriam looked down and Daniel’s face might as well have been carved out of white marble. They knew all about parents not wanting to see their kids.

  Jim drove me to the hospital. We didn’t talk — I don’t think I could have. He was leading me through corridors when I managed to whisper, ‘Have you seen her? Would she see you?’

  He took my arm and held it. ‘No, Kirby, she didn’t want to see me. But she does know you were coming to live with us.’

  I could not begin to imagine how it would be if my mother refused to see me.

  ‘This is it,’ Jim said. I stood in a wide corridor while he went up to the office. I looked around. There was a big room I could see into. People sat staring at a television. There was canned laughter but nobody smiled, they just stared. Then a woman raced out of the room.

  ‘Hello, you look … that programme’s shit … where did Arnie put my cup … I’m leaving tomorrow … you’ve gotta do something about …’ She stopped, turned on her heel and whizzed off down the corridor. My head was reeling. She’d said all that in less than two seconds.

  Jim took my arm again. ‘We’ll wait in here.’ He nodded at the woman he’d spoken to in the office. ‘Sue will go and tell her you’re here.’

  I slid my hand down so that I could grab hold of his. In the doorway of the big room we collided with the wild woman. She had a suitcase now, with clothes falling out of it. ‘Gotta go. Things to see, people to do. Gonna stand for parliament. Do the garden …’

  A couple of people came up to her and took her arms. ‘Come along, Katie,’ the man said. ‘We’ll just have a talk about this first.’

  ‘Time for some more medicine too, don’t you think?’ the woman smiled at her. But they held her firmly and steered her off down the corridor.

  I was shaking. Had Mum been like that? I looked around at the blank faces in the room we were entering. I’d rather she’d been like that than like these people who sat and stared and saw nothing. Jim let go my hand and put his arm around my shoulders instead.

  She came. I looked up and she was there in the doorway, staring at me. ‘Mum!’ I shrieked and I hurtled across the room and into her arms. ‘Mum! Oh, Mum!’ It was all I could say and I was laughing and tears were pouring down my face. She was crying too, crying and saying, ‘Forgive me, Kirby, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry!’

  We stood there, hugging each other for ages, then I led her gently to a chair and sat her down. She was so thin I was scared she’d break. I collapsed onto the floor at her feet, leaned on her knee and held her hand. ‘Oh, Mum, you didn’t have to run away! Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me the Elders were onto you? We could’ve got the police to stop them — anything!’

  She stroked my hair and said through more tears, ‘I know, Kirby. I know that now. The guilt! I’ve had to deal with all that guilt. Abandoning you!’ She shivered and the tears kept coming. ‘Do you hate me?’

  I looked up at her, a ghost of the mother I knew. ‘Of course I don’t hate you!’ I said. Not now, anyway. But I did, Mum, I hated you so much. ‘And when you get out of here we’ll get a flat and I’ll look after you and we’ll be happy again.’ I shut out the fleeting thought that I didn’t know how to look after my mother any more. I would have to do it, there was no one else.

  I looked around for Jim but he’d disap
peared into the passage. Quickly, I asked her something that had been puzzling me. ‘Mum, how come you raced off so quickly to go to Africa? I mean, something like that can’t be organised in two seconds. Can it?’

  She shook her head. ‘When Caleb and the Elders started coming, I wrote away about it. I figured it would help if I knew I had an escape — I never really meant to go. I never intended to leave you.’

  ‘But the letters — you wrote and said you were in Africa.’

  More tears slid down her face. ‘I couldn’t tell you I was here. I just couldn’t.’

  Sue — I discovered later that she was a nurse — came in. ‘How’s it going?’ Her eyes swept over Mum, missing nothing.

  ‘This is my daughter, Kirby,’ Mum said, wiping her eyes. Every little thing seemed to make her cry and she looked so tired.

  I stood up. ‘Mum, I’ll come and see you again tomorrow.’

  She pushed herself out of the chair and put her arms around me. ‘That will be lovely, darling.’

  I bit my lip. I knew her and I knew she was saying what she thought she ought to be saying. Oh, Mum.

  I was halfway across the room when I remembered Rory. ‘Mum,’ I turned back and took her hands again, ‘by the way — I know about Rory. I’ve met him. He’s nice. You’ll be proud of him.’

  ‘Rory?’ She was puzzled. Sue stood beside her, still.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You know. He wrote to you before Christmas.’ She just kept staring at me. I shook her hands. ‘Mum! The baby you had when you were sixteen! He wrote to you! And you ran away.’ I gulped and swallowed. I noticed Sue’s face. She looked as if she’d been given the key to a puzzle. But Mum had gone blank and she looked just like the people round the room. She was staring at nothing again. ‘Mum!’ I shrieked, but she didn’t respond. She just stood there completely blank.

  ‘Stay here, Kirby,’ Sue said, ‘I’ll see to Ellen, then I’ll come and talk to you.’

  Jim came back, sat me down in a chair and held my hand. What had I done? When Sue returned she said, ‘That’s good. She can really begin the healing process now.’

  ‘But she looked …’ I shuddered and glanced around me.

  ‘I know,’ Sue’s voice was very calm and comforting. ‘She’s had a relapse. But it’s out in the open now. We thought there was something she couldn’t talk about. That was too painful. She’ll be bad for two or three days, but then she’ll start to get better. Really better, this time.’

  ‘How long?’ I managed to ask.

  ‘Don’t try to see her for at least a week,’ Sue said. ‘And she won’t be ready to leave here for maybe a month. It depends a bit on how she responds to the drugs now that this is out in the open.’

  Jim took me home and I cried all the way.

  Life settled into a pattern. We went to school, came home, I’d phone the hospital to see how Mum was and we’d do our homework. Nina worked, so the three of us kids cooked dinner.

  After ten days, Mum asked to see me. She looked awful and everything I said made her cry. It’s normal, they said. She’s getting better. She’s talking about the baby, about what happened. She got a bit worse again for a day or two after she finally told how she’d got pregnant. An Elder had asked her father to let Mum work for him and then he’d ordered her to submit to him. It went on for two months and she’d been too terrified to tell anyone.

  Rory phoned every few days to see how she was. ‘God, the poor woman,’ he said, when he heard. I wondered how he felt about his father, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk to him about it.

  Once Mum started getting better and I could see the improvement, I stopped worrying so much about her. But I had time to think about myself. I realised I was loving living in a real family. The realisation that came two seconds after that was not so hot: I did not want to go back to just Mum and me. She was getting better, she’d be out soon. It was what I’d wanted for weeks. I shrugged. No good thinking about what’d happen then.

  Instead, I got busy. I joined a gym and made Miriam join too. I went five times a week but she’d only come twice.

  ‘Get a life,’ she said, if I nagged her to come more.

  ‘I’ve got a life.’

  ‘I noticed,’ she said, stretching out on the bed. ‘Gym every day, then you drag Daniel off to theatresports …’

  ‘He’s so good!’ I broke in. ‘You should see him. He’s a riot!’

  She ignored me. ‘And now you’ve taken on the brat next door …’

  ‘She’s only a brat because she can’t read and she feels bad because Danielle can and she’s two years younger than Marguerite so Marguerite does the brat act so’s people will growl at her and not notice she’s dumb.’ I ran out of breath. ‘So that’s why I’m teaching her to read.’

  Miriam rolled over on her stomach. ‘It’s great. And her mother’s over the moon. I just think you should slow down a bit. I mean, you go and see your mother every day on top of all that.’

  ‘I can do it. I like being busy.’ And wasn’t that just the truth? Be so busy that my life was filled up every single second so that I’d have things to remember when it was just Mum and me. At least that was my story, even to myself.

  I could see the improvement in Mum each time I visited. After a month, she looked better. Her hair was shiny again and she wore lipstick. ‘I went for a drive in the van today,’ she said. ‘We went up to see the windmill. It’s so high up there, I thought I was a bird.’

  I went to the gym nine times that week. Miriam yelled at me and even Daniel said, ‘Don’t you think you’re doing a little too much, Kirby?’

  It was all right for him. Nina had made him go to the same counsellor Miriam had gone to and every day he looked more relaxed and happy. She tried to make me go too, but I didn’t need it. I was fine as long as I was busy.

  After another week, Mum said she wanted to meet Rory. He came to visit afterwards. ‘That bloody goddamned religion’s got a lot to answer for,’ he said savagely. He looked at me. ‘I’ll come again, Kirby, when she’s stronger. I’ll bring Jenny — my fiancée. We’ll keep in touch.’ Eight days later they said she could leave the hospital the following week.

  I cooked complicated meals every night after that. I doubled the time I spent with Marguerite. I stayed at the gym until it closed. When I got home on Friday night, Daniel gave me a message from Mum: the psychologist needs to talk to us both before I leave. I’ve made an appointment for 11am Monday.

  I stared at the piece of pink paper where Daniel’s writing was wobbling around in a most odd way. The end. This was the end.

  I threw myself into the weekend. The whole family was exhausted by Sunday night.

  ‘You’re nuts,’ Miriam said. ‘Next time you get the urge to climb Kaukau you can do it by yourself.’

  I didn’t go to school on Monday morning, couldn’t stand the thought of sitting still until it was time to go to the hospital. Instead, I went to the gym.

  I sat on the bus that took me to the hospital and considered the meeting ahead. The psychologist would tell me how to look after Mum and give me all sorts of instructions I didn’t need. For chrissakes, I know how to look after my goddamned mother, I’ve only been doing it all my goddamned life.

  I clapped my hands over my mouth. Had I said that out loud? Nobody was staring at me, so perhaps I hadn’t.

  I got off the bus a stop too soon so that I had to run the rest of the way. It felt good to be moving.

  Sue met me at the office. ‘Hello, Kirby. I’ll take you through to Allan’s office.’ She smiled over her shoulder. ‘He’s the psychologist Ellen’s been working with.’

  I grunted. Great. But I didn’t want to work with him. He couldn’t tell me anything.

  They were both in there. Mum got up and hugged me. She held my shoulders and looked at me hard for a few seconds, then she sighed and muttered, ‘The sins of the fathers …’

  ‘I know that quote,’ I said brightly.

  ‘Sit down, Kirby.’ Allan waved at a cha
ir that reminded me of the ones in Mrs Fletcher’s office.

  I sat. ‘I don’t know why you wanted me to come today,’ I babbled. ‘I know how to look after my mother. There’s nothing you can tell me.’ I jumped up. ‘Come on, Mum. Let’s go. We have to find a flat. We’d better get on with it.’

  My mother didn’t move except to rub her hand across her eyes. ‘Oh, Kirby!’

  ‘This appointment is for an hour,’ Allan said. ‘So why don’t you sit down?’

  I glared at Mum. ‘We don’t need this, Mum! It’s just a waste of time!’

  She looked at me then and her eyes were full of tears. Again. Was she ever going to stop crying? ‘Do you remember the day I left?’ she asked huskily.

  As if I could ever forget. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I don’t remember much of it,’ she said, speaking as if her voice hurt her. ‘But I do remember saying I didn’t want you to end up like me. Running and running because you were too frightened to stand still.’ She reached for my hand but I snatched it away. ‘What is it, Kirby? What are you running from?’

  I backed into a corner and glared at the pair of them. ‘Nothing!’

  ‘Ellen spoke of the sins of the fathers,’ Allan observed as if he was discussing the weather. ‘Children learn patterns of behaviour from their parents. Ellen is watching you deal with your current problems by keeping so busy you can’t think. Just the way she coped with hers. Before her breakdown.’

  I could run for it. They couldn’t lock me in.

  ‘I have discovered that you can’t run forever, Kirby.’ My mother’s voice was stronger now. ‘You have to tell me what is worrying you.’

  ‘You’re a great one to say that!’ I scoffed. ‘You wouldn’t talk to me. You didn’t even tell me about Africa or Rory or … anything!’ I pushed my hands hard against the wall behind me. ‘Don’t talk to me about talking.’ I gasped for air and the terrible words I didn’t want to say tumbled out of my mouth. ‘I hate you!’ I slid down the wall, sobbing wildly, my hands over my face. ‘I shouldn’t have come. I didn’t want to come. I don’t … it isn’t … I didn’t mean …’