Selma In The City

HAPPY HALLOWE’EN ONE AND ALL!

I have always had trouble asking people for help, it is one of my worst failings. It is a strange thing because I love to help others, I am the first to come forward in a crisis; it makes me happy to help someone in need, but it is difficult for me to accept help for myself.

I have wondered about this trait of mine for years - is it pride, is it awkwardness, is it shame that stops me from saying to the people who can help me ‘Look, I need you to pull me out of the dark, I am mired in shadow?’

My family and friends think I am capable. In High School I won the ‘Most Dependable’ accolade five years in a row. I am quick-thinking, calm, unafraid on the outside; a maelstrom of cloud and woe on the inside.

My neighbour knocked on my door this afternoon. She needed my help. A little bird was lying under her scribbly gum tree, she wasn’t sure if it was dead. “I daren’t touch it,” she said. “I might really hurt it.” The little bird was dead, it had fallen from the nest, its little fluffy grey feathers splayed by the impact of the fall. My neighbour feigned horror, sympathy, but I could see she was more repulsed than bereaved.

I whisked the bird away, took it to my garden, shuffled in the shed for half an hour to find a suitable container as my neighbour whistled along with the radio, the bird forgotten. I placed the poor little creature in a tiny box and buried it under my maple tree. I wept for it, for the fact that no one had been there to help it when it had fallen, that I had come too late. I felt like that bird, plummeting, with nothing to hold onto but the denial of clarity.

I like to say :”Everything’s all right, everything’s fine,” maybe in the hope that if I say it often enough it will be true. But I have found that this form of self-deception is so close to self-destruction, it can be as dangerous as casting yourself into fire.

The promise of grace lures me into looking on the bright side. Sometimes it works, sometimes I feel faithless.

My husband nearly died this time last year. He is/was a biker and was hit by a car at 70km/h. He broke his collarbone, six ribs and punctured a lung. When I saw him at the accident scene everything stopped, it was like someone pulled a switch and the whole world moved into freeze frame. The only sound was my son screaming : “Save my Dad, save my Dad.”

After lengthy surgery he was in hospital for 6 weeks. Two weeks after his release he was readmitted. He had blood clots on his lungs and was moments away from a stroke. The surgery to remove the clots took six gruelling hours and cost $25,000, which thankfully, was covered by our insurance. But there are always other costs.

My husband was off work for 5 months. It is his business so I had to keep it going. I had to give up my own job as well as hold the fort at home and play Florence Nightingale. It was hard but I got through it. My mantra of ‘everything’s fine’ worked a treat in that instance. But it is during the aftermath that it becomes harder to fool yourself, especially when the bills keep coming and tiredness and fear choke like wet paint in an airless room.

My husband is not completely recovered. He will sometimes cower on the way to work because he thinks we are going to crash. He often gets me to pull over so he can walk the rest of the way. On bad nights he dreams of paralysis or of being buried alive. People comment on his diminished appearance but I assure them ‘everything is all right.’

It grows exhausting, repeating yourself. It feels like a mistake. I thought that nobody had noticed but today I experienced help, aimed in my direction, freely given. My son’s piano teacher offered to teach him for free until the end of the year moments before I was about to tell her I couldn’t afford the lessons right now. He is only 11 but he can play the blues and she can’t let him go.

My friend who owns a beach house that looks out onto a horizon that lasts forever offered it to me for the Christmas holidays for free. And my mother gave me some money as a gift not a loan.

I am the one who cannot say : “Can you help me?” yet help has descended unexpectedly. Light spreads. The kitchen smells of vanilla and icing sugar. My mother has left a plate of little cakes and an envelope filled with cash. I feel as if I have entered another world where I can’t hide anything from anyone. It is liberating, this helping, this kindness, the colours of it are not as unsteady as I thought.

The kettle sings. I pour my tea and eat a cake soft as memories of childhood. My son plays Ray Charles in the other room. I mentally pack my Christmas suitcase and buy us all a pair of new shoes. And I realise that help, whether given or received, is as radiant as a ripple of water in the morning. And it should not be refused, whatever its form.

I am enjoying my new job. It is labour intensive as I am basically cramming five days worth of work into three, but the work is enjoyable and I am having fun getting to know my new colleagues.

One of my fellow editors is Glenda. She is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Long, jet black hair, pale, porcelain skin, emerald eyes. She really could be one of the fairy folk except that she wears Nick Cave T-shirts and Doc Marten boots to work. She has so many black bangles and bracelets on that she jingles as she types. “I hope you’re not freaked out by me, Selma,” she says, “but I am one of the last remaining Goths in Sydney. Everyone is an emo now. They totally don’t get the Goth sensibility. It’s a lifestyle not a name tag.”

Glenda drinks black coffee all day long. The only hint of colour surrounding her is the little red pencil she uses to correct the proofs; it flicks tirelessly, a little red bird darting through tall grass. Glenda may be doused in black but there is something about her that is golden. She is a knit graffiti artist.

She was inspired when she heard the story of a group of guerilla knitters from Houston, Texas who wanted to make graffiti and street art more acceptable and decided to use their unfinished knitting projects as a way to “warm the world, one car antenna at a time.”

Glenda’s tag name is Stitchez and she knits colourful scarves, blankets and even tea cosies which she attaches to pieces of public property like telegraph poles, fence posts, parking meters, mail boxes and so on. She views it as a form of installation art. Her ultimate aim is to tie a 100 foot long scarf to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. She says I can come along the next time she tags as long as I have something I have knitted myself to tie to something. Now if I could just figure out how to cast on…..

I spent yesterday morning with Tanya’s husband, Rick. Tanya collapsed overnight and had to be taken to hospital. Rick has suspected for a while that she has been close to having a breakdown. “She couldn’t sit still. She was like a caged bird,” he said. “Up and down all night, listening outside Leo’s door to make sure he was OK. We got a letter from the school last week saying they could no longer tolerate the amount of phone calls she was making, up to 20 a day just to see if Leo was all right. I had no idea she was doing that. And then to attack you like she did -”

Rick cries silently. He is tall and sturdy with an air of dependability; one of those men that you hate to see cry. My husband is taking the boys to the beach. They have the video camera and plan to make a movie about sealife in rockpools. They rehearse the commentary as they leave - it is a cross between David Attenborough and Mike Myers. Leo appears carefree but his eyes are troubled.

It is noon. The sky is full of clouds as if a bowl of flour had been dropped from above. A wren ducks and dives in the maidenhair ferns that grow along the fence. It sees me watching and propels itself upward like a little sapphire bullet.

“We lost a child,” says Rick. “Four years before Leo was born. Our first child. She was beautiful. Rosie. We called her that because of her cheeks. They were like little rosebuds. She contracted meningitis when she was 6 months old. We took her to the emergency room with a high fever. We were discharged with paracetamol and a diagnosis of a non-specific virus. Well, they were wrong. That virus was very specific. We were back at the hospital within the hour because Rosie’s feet and hands had turned black. She had septicaemia. Her fever was 42 degrees Celsius. They told us they might be able to save her if they amputated her hands and feet. We didn’t know what to do. How can you make a decision like that? She died half an hour after reaching the hospital.

They put us in isolation, gave us antibiotics in case we had contracted the disease too. I wish they hadn’t. I wish I had died right there with her then none of this would have happened.”

Rick’s revelation has covered the garden in eggshells. Fragmented, pearly blue, they surround me. I cannot move for fear of crushing them underfoot. The clouds cast shadows on them like tears. I have lost my voice, it stumbles in my throat. Nothing I can say will be good enough, so I hold out my hand. Rick clings to it. I feel like I am pulling him from quicksand.

“Tanya never recovered from losing Rosie,” he says. “For a whole year she stayed in bed, barely spoke, barely ate. Most of the time I didn’t know she was there. It was like living with the ghost of someone you used to know. We separated for two years. I don’t know what she did in that time - she never speaks of it. One day she turned up at my office, said she still loved me, asked if we could try again. I was aimless, playing the single guy without conviction, so I agreed. A year later, Leo was born.”

Tanya had been overprotective from the start; when Rick pulled her up on it she defined her behaviour as necessary vigilance. When he accused her of redirecting her grief over Rosie’s death into an obsession with Leo’s life they almost split again but Tanya seemed to loosen the reins a bit and for a few years Rick thought she was in control of herself. But now he realises her apparent self-control was just an act.

“I can’t do it anymore,” he says. “How’s Leo going to turn out if I don’t intervene? What kind of father would I be if I just do nothing? And what will become of Tanya if she doesn’t get some help?”

Rick wants me to talk to the police, to lodge a complaint against Tanya; the hospital has recommended it as a way of getting her into the treatment centre she needs. It is a sad end to a harrowing tale of pain and grief. “Rosie’s gone but Leo’s still here,” says Rick. “He the one who counts now. We have to allow Tanya to see him without his sister’s ghost walking in his footsteps or we can never move forward. He has to be Leo, not the boy with the sister who died.”

As we wait for the police to come, a peace descends. A cat stretches, its whiskers soft little question marks. Someone plays Ella Fitzgerald a few doors away.

April in Paris, chestnuts in blossom, holiday tables under the trees…..

Speaking is a nuisance, so I bask like the cat, wondering at the ease with which he moves through the world. I sing with Ella in my head, the mellow tone of her voice is a silken shawl, enfolding me with consolation. The cat reaches for a butterfly and yawns, too idle to really bother. I smile, cheered up, able at last to pray that Tanya’s glass fortress of grief over time will shatter and that she will be able once again, to live.

I have bruises on my arms. They are green and purple. Quite pretty if you hold them up to the light. They remind me of a green and purple dress I had in the seventies. It was tie-dyed with a lace up bodice. Very cool in its day. I thought I was the folk singer, Melanie, when I wore it.

I am ambivalent about the bruises. I am grey hearted. I am affronted and affrighted. Yet I made an error of judgement so they are partly my fault.

My son has several friends who come back to our place to play on a regular basis. I have known the majority of the kids (and their parents) since Kindergarten. For the most part it’s been really beneficial. Our parenting styles and outlook on life are all very similar. We have almost all (parents and kids) grown up together.

My son has one friend whom he has known since Kindergarten who I would classify as an outsider. It is a classification imposed on him by his mother because he is the most amiable, pleasant, gorgeous kid I have ever met. At school he is very well liked and is always surrounded by friends. But that’s where it ends. You see, his mother is a little overprotective. He is nearly 12 but she won’t let him play at anyone’s place after school or go to sleepovers or parties.

Tanya is a worrier. She has said herself that if worrying were a sport she would be world champion. It’s not the state of the world she worries about however, or herself, or her husband, it’s her son. His health, his well-being, if he’s hot, if he’s cold, if he’s tired, if he’ll fall over during school sports and injure himself, if he’ll fall down the stairs on the way to the library, if the lunch she’s packed for him will somehow become contaminated before he eats it and he’ll have to be admitted to hospital with food poisoning. Tanya’s worrying is a full time job. She often appears exhausted.

Yet about six months ago she looked like she was beginning to loosen the apron strings. She actually agreed to let her son, Leo, come to my son’s 11th birthday party. I was elated and fearful at the same time. We went ten pin bowling. Every time Leo picked up the bowling ball I prayed he wouldn’t drop it on his foot.

The party went well. Leo began to come back to our place once or twice a month after school. At first I was nervous - interrupting someone else’s obsessiveness requires steely resolve and unwavering self belief, but I did the best I could. Gradually Tanya began to relax.

Then, like I always do, I stuffed everything up. The kids are beginning to spread their wings. They want to venture farther afield. Some of us let them ride their bikes or scooters unsupervised as long as they stay on a pre-chosen route which involves no crossing of main roads. They have to check back in with us every half hour. Some of them walk to the shops or go the post office. Others play in the local park which is across the street. It’s hard to let go of them but you have to show them you trust them. It’s a crazy, mixed-up world out there but I want my son to not be afraid of it. So I have to let him try new things bit by bit.

Leo came back to our place this afternoon. The boys wanted to go for a bike ride. We have two bikes and two helmets so that was no problem. The last time Leo visited, Tanya agreed to let the boys ride in the laneway behind our house as long as I supervised. I told them they could ride in the laneway. They asked to go round the block. Just once and then back again. A vision of Tanya fretting popped into my head so I said no. The boys cajoled, whined and threatened me by singing that Rihanna song Umbrella over and over again. (Every time I hear that you can stay under my umbrella, ella, ella, ay, ay I almost lose the will to live.) Like a fool I gave in. “It’s only a bike ride,” said my son.”Just once round the block.”

I thought of calling Tanya first, imagining her face if she were to find Leo lying on the footpath after falling off the bike, but decided a phone call was mirroring her obsessiveness. It was, after all, only a bike ride on the footpath. “Round the block only and come back in ten minutes,” I said. “Leo’s Mum won’t want him to be gone for long.”

The boys had been gone for two minutes when the doorbell rang. It was Tanya. She was an hour early. “I’m sorry to come so early,” she said, “but Leo had a scratchy throat last night and I was worried about him all day. I just can’t wait to see how he is.”

The walk up the hallway was like wading through marshland. The ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece was nearly as loud as the pounding of my heart. Tanya overtook me, running out into the garden, calling out: “Leo. I’m here darling. Leo!”

Her look when she turned to face me was a scene lifted straight from Hitchcock - all lowered brows and angular close-ups. “Where. is. he?” she muttered through clenched teeth. “Look, Tanya, please don’t get upset,” I stammered. “They’ve just gone for a bike ride. I told them to stay on the footpath. They’ll be back in under five minutes. It’s only a bike ride. Once round the block.”

“Only a bike ride! Only a bike ride!” she hollered, grabbing me by the forearms and squeezing. Her screaming filled the garden. She had sharp little teeth like a rabbit. Her grip on my arms was like a tourniquet pulled too tight. I struggled, her grip increased, she was ferocious with worry.

I heard the ‘ding’ of bike bells and the boys came through the back gate and into the garden. They were doing this running gag that my son does where one of them pretends to be a journalist and the other is Paris Hilton. Paris’ response to every question is :”That’s hot.” They were choking with laughter; I was choking with the fear that Tanya had just punctured one of my arteries.

With a flourish Tanya released me. I staggered backwards, falling into a flowerbed. My forearms were bright pink. Without a word, Tanya gathered up Leo’s belongings and left. “I wouldn’t let any harm come to him,” I call out after her. “You know that, don’t you?”

I sit in the flowerbed. I have taken root. My son brings me ice and antiseptic cream. My fingers are twitching with the return of blood flow to my hands. “Leo won’t be allowed to play here anymore, will he, Mum?” asks my son. His eyes are resigned but his lower lip is trembling as if he is about to cry. “Probably not,” I reply. “Nothing ever happens to Leo,” he says. “He’s very sensible. His Mum shouldn’t worry so much, should she?”
“No she shouldn’t,” I say.

As my bruises turn from pink to purple and green I think about the nature of worry. There’s a lot to worry about, let’s face it; once you begin you realise the list of worries is almost endless, so perhaps it’s best not to begin at all. I resolve not to worry anymore but as soon as I make that resolution I think of Leo at 11 years of age, and of how his mother is so afraid of losing him she is pushing him away. And I worry about him walking away from her, sometime in the future, strong enough to emerge without any bruises of his own.