The Night my Bum Dropped

by Gretel Killeen

  Sorry for saying Thank You

  Maybe I should forget about sending a card.

  The Zucchini and the Doughnut

  The last time I sent a card was to congratulate a workmate on her engagement. But I was running late to meet the last mail and had to buy the card at the petrol station where my selection was reduced to a choice of:

  Happy Birthday Now You’re 2

  Get Well Soon

  or

  Sorry About Your Loss

  I sent the card that said Sorry About Your Loss and hoped that they’d think it was funny. Unfortunately I don’t think they did, because I certainly wasn’t invited to the engagement party, and in fact never heard from them again.

  Once I sent a Happy Birthday card to my lawyer and I suspect he charged me to read it.

  My mother has always been great at sending the right card or letter at any momentous occasion. She can’t really cook or clean or be relied on to hem a skirt without using a stapler, but she will always send the right card. Of course, Mum started writing these notes in a time when there was only snail mail and making a phone call required eating two cans of baked beans, washing the cans, attaching them to each other with a long piece of string, then riding in your horse and buggy to your friend’s house to give him or her one of the cans, then riding home again, without tripping over the string, so that you could chat by speaking into your can.

  In those days life was pretty simple.

  Good heavens, being gay wasn’t even invented then! It is amazing that my mother is so socially in tune. It is amazing that she can be so worldly-wise, considering her attitude to international travel is, ‘Why would you want to spend all that time on a plane to get to a place that you can just watch on television?’ It is gobsmacking that she can be so extraordinarily affectionate and emotional when it comes to etiquette interaction with near strangers and yet so emotionally repressed when it comes to anything truly personal.

  ‘What was your wedding day like, Mum?’ I asked one cold afternoon. (It was hot outside, but somehow a chill wind was blowing through the kitchen.)

  ‘My wedding day,’ Mum replied. ‘What was it like? Oh, fine thanks.’

  I was trying so hard to do the right thing with Mum on that occasion, just as I think I’ve tried so hard to do the right thing in life, but now I’m worried that I’ve failed on all counts. And I’m worried that I’m worrying. And I’m worried that no matter what I do, it will actually be wrong because I’m worried that I’m becoming a fearful and paranoid person. I’m increasingly worried that I’m about to get busted for doing something bad and I’m worried that I’m always somehow in the process of doing something wrong even when I know that I’m not.

  This paranoia isn’t helped at all by being a mother. The term mother is actually derived from the Latin word motherum, which translates to mean ‘everything is your fault’. As a mother it’s your fault if it rains during school holidays, if the DVD is scratched, if there is a noisy bird outside a bedroom window or if anyone has a stomach-ache. (Actually, knowing my cooking, that one probably is my fault.)

  I wonder whether I inherited my worrying from my mother. Some people inherit great wealth from their families, but so far all I seem to have inherited is an allergy to mushrooms.

  Mum and I don’t look alike in any way whatsoever but once or twice we have been known to laugh at the same joke. I suddenly wonder whether my mother has an aching black hole in her heart too and I decide to ask. I ring Mum’s mobile but her phone is switched off. Mum’s mobile phone is usually switched off, because she wants to save the battery. This, of course, means that should she ever have the phone on and it does actually ring, she doesn’t recognise the sound. This is turn means she assumes that the nagging ringtone must be her hearing aid. And so my mother turns off her hearing aid. Which means that she can no longer hear the nagging ringtone – of my phone call! And the call goes unanswered.

  I drive to Mum’s place and she immediately assumes that my spontaneous visit means that someone has died. This nearly gives her a heart attack, because she can’t believe that someone’s passing has passed her by and she hasn’t managed to send out a condolence card. We spend an hour scouring the newspaper death notices and when she’s finally satisfied that everyone she knows, has ever met or even only heard of is still alive, we spontaneously move onto the topic of Aunty Peg’s recent laser surgery on her piles.

  ‘Would you like some spaghetti?’ Mum asks as she chats on some more about piles.

  ‘Ah, no thanks, Mum. I’m not sure that it will sit well with our cup of tea.’

  ‘I could serve it cold with ice-cream and you could imagine it was a worm cake.’

  ‘Ah, no thanks, Mum. I actually can’t stay too much longer, but before I go there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.’

  ‘Ah, yes … I’ve been waiting for this question.’

  ‘You have?’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes, ever since you became a teenager.’

  ‘So, can you tell me the answer?’

  ‘Of course, but hold on a minute. I’ll just get something from the kitchen.’ And with that Mum goes to the fridge and returns with the props she’d placed in the freezer in 1972.

  ‘Let me tell you about the birds and the bees. This,’ she says, holding up a frozen zucchini, ‘is what we call a penis, and this,’ she says while waving a frayed frozen doughnut, ‘is what we call a vagina.’

  I feign surprise. Well, actually I’m not feigning it at all, because I am surprised, on many levels. But above all else I am surprised that my mum can still surprise me, because she hasn’t really done so since the day she gave me a breastfeeding lesson after the birth of my son, in which she simulated a suckling baby using the bladder from a cask of wine and the neighbour’s cat.

  And the surprise before that was the time Mum told me she was giving me a surprise eleventh birthday party, and the actual surprise was that she didn’t.

  I thank Mum for her lesson and then, as she walks me to the front door, I say, ‘Mum, do you have an ache in your heart?’

  ‘No, dear,’ she replies. ‘I’m on medication.’

  ‘No, Mum. I mean, do you find life fulfilling?’

  ‘Well, Number Three child,’ she replies, trying hard to use her most affectionate term of reference for me.

  ‘Actually, Mum, I’m Number Six,’ I say quietly.

  ‘Well, Number Six,’ she continues, while clearly mentally trying to do the maths. ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, whether or not I find life fulfilling is a very intimate and personal question, which is really none of your business.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say.

  ‘That’s okay,’ she replies, ‘but you should probably send me a card of apology.’

  And then we hug like we both have germs and I walk to my car.

  ‘Number Sixty-Three?’

  ‘Yes?’ I say as I turn to my mum on the assumption she is talking to me.

  ‘Maybe you wouldn’t be so lonely if you weren’t so outspoken.’

  ‘But what’s the point of being alive if you can’t express yourself?’ I reply. But my mum doesn’t answer. She just shakes her head, because she sees my response as an example of my outspokenness.

  When I get in the car I slowly realise just what an effort it was on my mum’s behalf to make this simple comment, because we’ve lived for so long in a world where no one ever makes personal comments or observations. If you did something terrible, it wasn’t talked about for fear of disgracing the family, and if you did something great, it wasn’t talked about either, for fear of seeming to be better than anyone else. The upshot of all this, of course, was that you never quite knew whether no one was talking to you because you’d been too good or because you’d been too bad.

  But as time passes I do realise just how much pain all girls put their mums through as they’re growing up. I try to show my appreciation nowadays by giving Mum gifts that she won’t have to dust. And I try to make her happy, but I wonder som
etimes whether women of my mother’s generation can be happy. They’re so lost within the cracks. They were possibly perfectly happy being full-time mums, which let’s face it is a full-time thankless occupation, and then all of a sudden Women’s Lib told them that they not only could aspire to more but they actually should. And thus the females of the world were split in half, into those who were ashamed that they were ‘just mums’ and those who were exhausted and feeling guilty that they were not properly doing their jobs in either the office or the home.

  I wonder whether a woman’s lot will ever be appreciated. Maybe my emptiness is unquenchable because it’s simply the lot of my chromosomes. I wonder whether we women appreciate ourselves.

  Sometimes I wonder too what it would be like if the role of women had stayed the same as it was in our grandmas’ time. I guess I’m not really one to say because I didn’t know my grandma very well and I just know that I think of her whenever I smell parsley or see a box of bran.

  Although, I must say, I did know Grandma well enough to realise at her death that the minister hired to speak at the funeral was accidentally talking about someone else – in fact, a fifty-year-old Belgian man who apparently fancied a tune on the flugelhorn. I recall that my uncle also noticed this anomaly, so when the minister had finished, my uncle took to the lectern to set the record straight, but after a moment of spluttering it was revealed that he didn’t know very much about his mum, my grandma, either. ‘Um, she was a very thorough woman,’ he began. ‘She chewed every mouthful of food one hundred times … This, of course, meant that she was incredibly boring to go out to dinner with so … I don’t really know why she did it … because she obviously died anyway.’

  I wish I’d got to know you, Grandma. I wonder if you’re waiting for me now. I’m sorry if I disappoint and confuse you. I often disappoint and confuse myself.

  P.S. Did you ever have an ache in your heart?

  P.P.S. Now I understand why you wore that device that we used to call a Bum Bra.

  7

  ‘Well, I agree that it’s unfortunate that your bum has dropped, darling, but there are some good things about it.’

  ‘Really? Like what?’

  ‘Well, now, when you go to sit on those hard pews in church, you’ll never need to take a cushion again.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum.’

  ‘And … if you decide to leave your bum as it is, you could sub-let part of it as advertising space.’

  ‘What do you mean “leave my bum as it is”? What else can I do with it?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure about the technicalities, but it does seem to me that if you have more bum than you need, and you have a hole in your heart, then you have the problem and the solution right there in front of you – sorry, behind you – and you could find a doctor somewhere who could simply stuff part of your bum into your heart.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum, but did you just say “simply stuff part of your bum into your heart”?’

  ‘Yes, I did, Number Sixty-Three. Yes, I did. And to think you just thought I was a good cook!’

  My Mother Makes a Speech Too

  The day after my visit my mother rings, and when I answer the phone she says, ‘Who’s this?’

  I tell her who I am and she continues to speak.

  ‘I’ve had a bit of a think about the ache in your heart,’ she says, ‘and it seems to me that you’re suffering on two levels. The macro and the micro.’

  I am in shock. Macro and micro? Where the hell did my mother learn such big little words! When I catch my breath I’m now the one who asks, ‘Um, who’s this?’

  ‘It’s me, Number Six or Three. It’s your mother. I’m at the dentist.’

  ‘What on earth are you doing there? Are you okay?’

  ‘Well, as you know, I hadn’t been to the dentist for over sixty years, but my life insurance said I had to come and so lo and behold I’m here.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely fine. Never better. The dentist gave me gas.’

  ‘Do you need a lift home?’

  ‘No, I’m still in the chair.’

  ‘So you’re still taking the gas?’

  ‘Yes, the doctor —’

  ‘Dentist,’ I say, correcting Mum.

  ‘The doctor … um, dentist said I have to have gas.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To stop me screaming, of course. And he also said that I should take a minute to call someone for reassurance. So I thought I’d call you.’

  ‘Oh, well … um, everything will be all right and I’m sure it won’t take long and … um, you’ll be back home soon. No problem.’

  ‘No, Number Six. Shut up please! I’m ringing so that I can give you reassurance.’

  ‘Oh, thanks, Mum, but —’

  ‘Yes, because I wanted to say that on a macro level I can understand the empty pain in your heart because life is all too much. The freedom that humans fight for throughout the world has not brought us freedom at all. We have freedom of speech in this country, for example, which we then inhibit through the imposition of political correctness that insists through law that we deceive one another by hiding our true sentiments.

  ‘In fact we have many freedoms that we seem hell-bent on destroying because we’re actually scared of freedom. We have the freedom to love whomever we want, but this ironically means we don’t hang around most relationships long enough to ever really learn how to love. Didn’t statistics somewhere say that people who live in arranged marriages are just as happy as those who marry for love? Is that true, Number Six, or did I invent it to make myself feel bad?’

  ‘I’m not sure, Mum,’ I reply. ‘I mean, it is possible that when we say “just as happy” as each other, we actually mean we’re all equally completely miserable.’

  ‘No, Number Six, I’m not miserable. I’m happy and I’m in love with the doctor-dentist.’

  ‘Okay, Mum. That’s good news. You should probably get off the phone now so that the dentist can finish.’

  ‘Well, before I go I just want to tell you that on a micro level I cannot believe that you can be so smart and so incredibly naive at the same time. I think you have a hole in your heart because you compare yourself to others and think that they’re better. And you only think that they’re better than you because you believe their propaganda.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t you realise that everyone is doing a spin on themselves? They’re all saying they’re thrilled with their jobs and their wives are beautiful and their children are geniuses because they don’t want to seem like failures. In polite society what you’re meant to do is act like you believe the person’s spiel and then give your spin back. That’s the deal people make. I’ll believe your bullshit if you’ll believe mine.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘But you, Number Six, are not playing the game properly. No wonder you don’t feel like a winner!’

  ‘I guess you’re right,’ I say. ‘I really need to change my attitude because I don’t feel like I’m even in the game.’

  ‘Well, I can’t talk about this any more,’ she says, ‘because the dentist has a big hard thing that he wants to put in my mouth.’

  I don’t ask her anything else. I begin to cry my loud wailing sobby cry that sounds a bit like the mating call of a moose. And then I quickly hang up.

  Within moments my mum rings back. ‘Oh, by the way, just thought I should let you know that due to my gas situation, I had you on speakerphone.’

  ‘Oh, Mum. How could you!’

  ‘Don’t worry, Number Six. I won’t tell a soul. The dental assistant has boobs that are so big and incredibly pert that they seem to somehow cover her ears, and the dentist and I are in love so he’s really just like family.’

  I sit in the cat-wee chair. I flick through a magazine. There’s an article in one of the fashion mags that says designer feet are THE IMPORTANT THING and there are surgeons who specialise in foot liposuctions, toe lengthening and shortening, and collagen injections
for the balls of the feet to provide stiletto cushioning. I wonder whether pursuing these operations would fill the space in my heart. I wonder whether it’s possible to get a stiletto heel attached to the sole of your foot so that you could still wear heels while wearing bare feet.

  I think about what my mum said. I wonder whether I should be like everyone else. I wonder what it’s like to be a lemming. I wonder why one lemming would follow other lemmings off a cliff. I assume the first lemming to leap must be very charismatic – and/or perhaps not very bright.

  So how stupid must all the followers be?

  And what about the lemmings that don’t jump, because at least two lemmings must stay behind or else there’d be no lemmings left to make more lemmings?

  So are the lemmings that don’t jump geniuses or cowards?

  I wonder which one I am.

  And then I find myself worrying again and the hole in my heart starts to throb. And I become desperate to find a cure. But the only two people in my life whose advice I haven’t asked are my children who – let’s be honest – are more than happy to discuss my problems, just as long as I pay them.

  Leap Frog

  Frog is out buying the essential things for his studies overseas. Tadpole comes home from school, throws her bag on the table, hurls her shoes across the living room and announces, ‘I don’t think I can do maths any more.’

  ‘Why not?’ I ask.

  ‘Because it’s a subject where there’s absolutely no room for creativity.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, an answer is either right or wrong.’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘Well, it’s hypocritical.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The school spends all year telling us that the important thing about life is not the destination but the journey … and then they make us do a subject which practises the exact opposite theory.’