The Penance Room

by Carol Coffey

  “You felt sorry for him?”

  “Yes,” Aishling says slowly. She looks up and pushes the hair back from her eyes which are slightly glassy and I know she has been remembering me as I was, running around and making mischief, a normal child. “You really do know how to get people to talk,” she says, amazed that he has got the information out of her that she was at first reluctant to give.

  Steve looks smug. “I’ve had a lot of practice. Tomorrow I’m going to try Wilfred again.”

  “Now that I’ll have to stay up for,” she says with an equally looking smug expression and they leave the garden and make their way into the house.

  Chapter 22

  The following day, Jimmy returns home by ambulance. He looks thinner and his silvery blue eyes seem to bulge out of their sockets. The ambulance men wheel him into the Penance Room and go to the office to speak with my mother. I see him glancing at Martin who opens his mouth as if he is going to say something but decides not to. I know he is glad to have Jimmy back even though he will never say it. Even though it is very hot, Jimmy is shaking and when the blanket wrapped around him falls onto the ground, he can do nothing except look at it and shiver. I watch with interest as Martin gets up slowly and walks towards him. Jimmy moves back into his wheelchair. He is afraid that Martin is going to hit him. He is right to be worried as I have seen them fighting since I was very small. Martin walks slowly and stops right in front of Jimmy. As he bends forward, fear spreads across Jimmy’s face but changes to tears as Martin lifts the blanket off the floor and throws it roughly over his old enemy. When my mother comes into the room, Jimmy is crying openly and I know that it is partly because Martin has shown him kindness and partly because he could not lift the blanket himself.

  My mother hugs him. “There now, Jimmy. I’d have thought you’d be glad to get out of hospital and be back home!”

  But he doesn’t stop crying and Mother has to take him to his room where he can have some privacy.

  When the others gather one by one, I am glad to see Victoria and Penelope sitting with Iren. They are speaking French and I am sorry that I cannot read their lips. Iren is smiling and waving her hands around. I have never seen her look so happy. It is Saturday so my father is home and is in Wilfred’s room, trying to talk him into speaking with Steve but he still refuses. I feel the screen door banging and I see Wilfred walk down the road toward the pub. He doesn’t often go out but today he needs an escape route. I follow Steve into the Penance Room and I can see Martin looking at him warily. I know that he is almost ready to tell his story but that there is still a small part of him that thinks he was not to blame for what happened to his family. Breakfast is over and Li is sitting in the Penance Room beside Mina and Kai. Her narrow brown eyes are moving left to right as if she is reading from a book. She stands suddenly.

  “Mr Laver?”

  “Yes?” Steve says with a smile.

  “Is it only residents that you wish to speak to or do you want to hear my story?”

  Even though Steve knows that she has a story to tell, his research is confined to the elderly. He shakes his head.

  “It will help others here,” she says quickly, looking at Mina.

  Steve suddenly understands why Li wants to recall her past and turns his tape recorder on. He introduces her and nods for her to begin.

  “I came to this country in 1943 when I was only twenty-three years old. I was born in a small village south of Shanghai and had two older brothers. We all lived in one tiny house until I married at seventeen and moved into my husband’s parents’ house in a neighbouring village which was not much bigger. This was the same year that Japan invaded China. The war of resistance against Japan was showing itself slowly. Everywhere we would hear that villages were burned down and we could see the war coming closer to us. China had many resources and the Japanese wanted our coal and iron. My husband and I had no money and my job was to care for my elderly mother and father-in-law. Jin worked on the tiny patch of land his parents had in the mountains. He walked there every day and grew vegetables. As the last of his siblings to live at home it was Jin’s responsibility to take a wife to care for his parents. It was very hard because I was not their first choice for their son but he asked for me and so it was agreed that we should marry. I was very unhappy because nothing I did was good enough and when my work was done, I would visit my mother and cry. She would say, ‘Daughter, it is your job now, so smile and be thankful for what you have.’ One thing I am thankful for was that she taught me to be a good cook. When I was nineteen I had my first child, a beautiful girl. Jin was happy. It didn’t matter to him that she was a girl. She slept almost all the time and we named her Ning which means tranquillity. After months of fighting, my two brothers and my father died as honourable soldiers. My mother was all alone and I would visit her and try to comfort her. She said she wanted to die. She said that every day and I begged her, saying, ‘You are all of the family I have left so don’t leave me!’”

  Li looks around the room but then focuses on Mina. Everyone knows that her story is for her benefit.

  “Before the war, Germany helped China with training of our military but when the Japanese invaded China, Hitler supported Japan so the Soviet Union became our allies. Even so, many Chinese died – everywhere people were dying. I tell you this not to hold grudges but to say how happy I am now to be here. I don’t talk of these things. Not even to my children but, today, maybe this story help somebody else.”

  She looks at Mina and then at Kai. Everyone can see tears forming in Li’s eyes. She is usually happy and we have never seen her cry before. Kai looks embarrassed and keeps his eyes on the floor. Beside him Mina is clasping her hands tightly together and looking into her lap.

  “One day, I heard that houses in my mother’s village had been set alight by Japanese soldiers. I left Ning who was six months old with my mother-in-law and ran all the way there but there was nothing wrong. My mother was sitting there crying for my father and my brothers like she had been doing for a long time. She had bad feet and could not walk far without help. I needed Jin to help me carry her so I told her to stay there, that I would come back for her later . . .”

  Li swallows again. Everyone can see that she is reliving something awful, something she has never given words to, until now.

  “I had to leave her – I was worried because my mother-in-law was old and I didn’t like to leave her looking after Ning for very long. When I tried to return home, it took me a long time to get through the rows of Japanese soldiers passing me. I knew they were on their way to my mother’s village but when I looked towards home, I could see smoke blowing up into the sky. I screamed and one soldier tried to . . . I bit his hand and the others laughed at him so he let me go. I ran home without stopping and when I got to . . . when I saw . . . it was gone . . .”

  Li stares off into space and we know what she is looking at: rows of burnt huts and the villagers lying dead all around her.

  “The house was just embers and sparks with some roof hanging down. I ran inside and my mother and father-in-law were both dead, lying face down on the floor. I screamed, ‘Ning! Ning!’ But I could not hear her crying. I . . . turned them over and they . . . Ning was underneath them. They had tried to protect her from the fire and she was perfect. She looked asleep. I thought she was . . . just asleep. I lifted her and, when she didn’t open her eyes, I shook her and started to scream. When I realised that she was gone I sat in the embers with her in my arms and rocked her. There was nothing else for me to do. Even when the darkness fell, I didn’t move. I waited until Jin came and stood inside the door. He didn’t cry. Someone had stopped him and told him – they warned him that only I was left, that his family, his parents and child were gone. Someone brought us water but we just sat there and held her in our arms with screaming and chaos around us. I asked Jin why? Why did the Japanese do this to us? What did we do? Jin buried all three of his family together in the morning light and we gathered whatever we had left and m
ade our way to my mother’s village. Only once did he say to me that I should have been there. It was shortly before our second daughter was born and he never said it again. The soldiers had not gone into my mother’s village which was off the main path and not visible from the road so when we got to her she was safe. Together we walked with some of our neighbours to my aunt’s house in Shanghai. I remember moving forward but my heart was left behind in the damp earth with my baby’s body inside it. You could not believe the awful things that we saw on the road . . . things I . . . it is best not to remember. The Japanese soldiers were advancing westwards and we had nowhere to go. People said that they were only killing enemies of Japan but everywhere boys and young men were dying and women and girls were raped.”

  Iren looks up and starts to cry.

  “Aron! Soldiers!” she shouts and I am brought to tears when I see Penelope rub her arm and tell her there are no more soldiers. If only Iren really believed that.

  “My aunt’s friend was a fisherman and he said he could get all six of us into boats and that we could get away – but where to? No one knew where was safe to go. Many people were heading westward by land but so were the Japanese. When we got to the water, only one tiny rowboat was still there, the others were burned. My aunt got in and said, ‘Please, everyone squeeze in!’ but there was no room for us. We would surely sink the boat if we got in. We told her to go, to leave and we would find her. We said we would reach America and find each other in San Francisco.”

  Li smiles sadly at the naïvety of such a pact.

  “Such silly talk but we didn’t know. It was best that we believed. I remember her waving with her husband and the fisherman and his wife in a tiny boat. You could see flames in the water and I remember thinking at that moment that the whole world was on fire and would never be the same again. We never saw my aunt again and we never found out what happened to her. I know she must have drowned but Jin and I for a few years after used to talk of her in a fancy apartment in America. It made us happy . . .”

  Li stops again and thinks about her aunt. She looks down and for a moment we think that this is the end of her story, that this is as much as she can tell us.

  Steve moves into her line of vision and she looks intently at him for a moment before returning to her story.

  Wilfred comes in and sits at the far end of the room, safe in the knowledge that someone else is telling their story and he will be left alone for at least another day. He smells of beer and I see my mother looking at him with her tight mouth. Li looks pleased that he is here as if part of her story will make him happy but I don’t see how. She continues.

  “Jin, my mother and I made our way on foot with the crowds of refugees. People were fleeing to Yunnan on the border with Vietnam and Laos. Mother’s feet were not good so a man with a rickshaw took her some of the way and left her in a village to wait for us with another old woman. My mother was exhausted and, four weeks into our journey, she died. We had walked all day with little food or drink and when we hid for the night in some scrub, we went to sleep quickly. I lay beside her to keep her warm and Jin slept beside the men who took turns guarding us through the night. When we woke, I didn’t even have to look at her to know she was dead. Each morning, I could feel her breathing heavily and coughing but that morning she was very still. I didn’t cry although I cried for her many years later. She was tired and I didn’t want her to suffer any more. I knew that worse things were to come and I was happy in my heart that she was with my father and my brothers and that she could now care for my daughter until I met them again. Jin and the other men buried her by the roadside. I could not remember where even if you brought me there now so I have nowhere to visit her except in my mind.

  “We made it to Kunming where we lived for many months. A group of foreigners, including an American who had been running a Christian school, helped Jin and me and gave us shelter and some work when we were stronger. We joined the church and became Christians. One of the foreigners was from Germany and it was well known that he was a Nazi. I have often thought of him and thought that there you might think is a cruel man but he had a heart and he tried to do the right thing, even when such awful things were happening around him.”

  Wilfred doesn’t look up but I can see his face turn bright red and that familiar cough begin to choke him. He puts his hand to his mouth to smother it and pretends to read the newspaper. Even when people are reaching out to him, even when people are telling him good things, he rejects them because he doesn’t think he is worthy of any happiness.

  “My husband had been a proud soldier fighting with my father and brothers so it was not safe for us to remain in China. Our new friends helped us to travel to Malaysia to some British friends of theirs but things were not much better there. This couple ran a school which was now banned. They too were no longer safe. They taught Jin and me as well as some other refugees to speak English. Some months later, they helped us to board a ship to Australia. If you could understand – we didn’t even know where Australia was and the only stories we had heard in China was that this place was full of gold where many of our villagers went and never returned. Most of the people on the ship were British people living in Malay which was their colony then. They were fleeing Japanese occupation and as Australia was part of the Commonwealth, it was the safest and nearest place to go at that time. But it was a dangerous journey because the war was still in full force.

  “When we reached Perth I was only twenty-three years old. I remember Jin and me standing at that port with nothing that was our own. There was a camp for us to go to until we found a home and, while most people inside this camp were nice, when we left it we had problems. Some Australians thought we were communists but we said, ‘No, we are Christians.’ For years we went from place to place and I said to Jin, ‘Some day we will have to accept that whatever town we choose, we have to make it our home and accept that it will not be perfect. Always, there will be people who don’t understand that we are looking for a better life, not to take anything away from anyone, not to do any harm.’

  “We came to Sydney where there were many other Chinese people but, at this stage, many of these people were born here and were not so interested in newcomers. They just wanted to be Australians. So did we. Eventually Jin got a job as a gardener growing vegetables on a farm outside Broken Hill. I was pregnant with our daughter then but I did not become hopeful that she would come as I believed I would lose her just as I lost Ning. But four months after we settled in Broken Hill, our beautiful daughter was born. We named her Zhenzhen which means ‘precious’ but as she grew she didn’t like her name and insisted we call her Susan. She wanted so much to fit in when she was a young girl. She didn’t like being different. Thirteen years later, Kai was born. Jin and I had an Australian neighbour whose child was called Kai and we thought it was an Australian name but when our son Kai was two, I bought a book and found the word had many meanings. In Hawaiian it means ‘ocean’. In Welsh, it means the ‘keeper of the keys’. My favourite meaning is the New Zealand Maori one which says that Kai means ‘food’ as ever since he was a little boy he was always hungry, always wanting me to cook and, look, now he wants to be a baker! I think it must have been because I was so hungry for so many years during the war.”

  Li looks at Mina and keeps her gaze there for a few seconds. Mina nods as if she understands, as if she finally knows that Li is not her enemy but someone who has suffered just as much as she has.

  “Susan is now twenty-nine years old and she lives in America. She was only nine when she said she wanted to be a doctor and to work in poor countries. I knew my daughter well and I knew that this would come true. So I cleaned houses and offices and cooked food for people’s parties to pay for her education and, the day she graduated from university in Sydney, I didn’t think about China or the Japanese, or even of my first born, Ning. I thought of how happy life turned out for Jin and me. I thought how lucky I was, that nothing more could ever hurt me. I had everything. Susan applie
d for jobs in Africa, volunteer work. She loved it. When she came home, she told me that she had met an American boy there, another doctor, and when she was accepted to do paediatric training in New York, she said yes, she would go there. Jin and I were upset but we were so proud of her. We wanted what was best for our daughter so we let her go and hoped this romance would not last. Two years later, she sent us the fare to America. She said she was getting married. Married to a boy that we had never met and whose family we didn’t know. ‘You’ll meet him, Mum,’ she said. ‘Robert is nice. You’ll like him.’ Looking back, I knew she was being secretive. I said, ‘Come home. Let us meet this man and your father will decide if it is right for you.’ Jin and I, we tried to be Australian parents and let her make her own decisions but to let her marry a man we didn’t know! We could not do it. But she would not come so Jin and I boarded a flight to New York to try to talk to her.

  “When we got there, I could see why she kept Robert a secret from us. I can still see Jin’s face at that airport when we saw a young Japanese boy smiling at us, standing, holding hands with our beautiful Zhenzhen. He put out his hand and in a strong American accent said, ‘Hi, I’m Robert.’ Jin didn’t speak at all while I mumbled something. I cannot remember what I said. I was in shock. I remember looking at Susan but she could not look her parents in the eye. Later, I thought that it was our fault that she could not tell us. Jin and I thought that we had not affected our children with our feelings. We didn’t speak of the war and not often did we tell them stories of how we had to come to Australia for a new life. But somehow, our daughter knew that we would judge Robert before we had a chance to meet him. Somehow our prejudice seeped into our girl’s heart, without us wanting this to happen. It was wise of our daughter to take that action but still we thought that she would never marry a Japanese boy out of respect for her parents and for her dead family. Then we went to Robert’s parents’ home. I don’t know how we got there. Jin and I held hands in a fast-moving car. I could feel the sweat on his hand. Robert’s parents and grandparents had been born in America. But this didn’t matter to us at that moment. We were sitting in the lounge room with Japanese people who raped and murdered our family and our friends, with people who were responsible for murdering my innocent baby girl, Susan’s sister.