The Family Law (13 page)

The next time I saw her, Helen had changed. She scowled at me a lot. I couldn't help but feel partially to blame. In fact, I felt lousy.

‘What's the problem?' Mum asked one night, after she found me heaving and dripping snot all over the sofa. I was crying so hard I couldn't breathe. My mouth opened and closed, gasping and fish-like: all movement, no sound.

I couldn't even speak.

‘
Yuk
?' Mum patted my shoulder comfortingly and smiled.

‘I ha-ave sum-thi-ing,' I choked, ‘to tell you.'

She looked concerned. ‘Are you on drugs?'

I shook my head.

‘You've gotten Rebecca pregnant.' Rebecca was my best high-school friend.

‘Oh god, no!' I sobbed.

‘Um …' Mum said, as though she was on a game show. ‘I know, I know! You're
gay
.'

When I nodded, she put a hand to her chest, sighed and then laughed with relief.

‘Well, what's wrong with that?' Mum asked. ‘There's nothing wrong with being gay.'

I looked up at her, surprised. ‘Really?'

‘Gay people can't help it,' she said. ‘It just means that something went wrong in the womb, that's all.'

 

*

 

After I came out, it was strange not having something to be constantly anxious about, so I chose to focus again on my body. I'd hovered around the
49
-kilogram mark for most of my life, and I was sick of it. I hadn't grown taller or put on any weight since I'd left high school. My aim was to build some biceps, stack on some muscle and stop looking as though someone had draped skin over a skeleton. My metabolism was like a furnace. I would ingest veritable troughs of food, only to crap it all out minutes later. It made weight gain extremely difficult.

I sought advice from my friend Daniel – someone who was so aggressively heterosexual and manly that he once shat
on
a toilet seat by mistake – who had become noticeably beefier. When I went to hug him each time I saw him, it became increasingly difficult; he was becoming a truck. His advice was simple: go to the gym; invest in protein shakes. So I did exactly as he said: I joined the gym, worked out like a demon and swam laps every other day. If my life were a movie, this period would be a montage of protein shakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, bananas, bench presses, swimming laps and grunting. Sweat would trickle down my face.

About a month later, I'd put on five kilos. On a body size like mine, this was a conspicuous change. Exhilarated, I became adventurous with the protein shakes, blending stuff like milk, bananas, Milo, a tub of Milo dairy dessert, WeetBix and raw eggs into the protein mix. Five hours later, the resulting farts were indescribably rancid.

‘Holy shit,' said my sister Tammy from the next room, choking. ‘What is that
smell
?' The farts would not stop.

Later, when my boyfriend Scott had trudged back from work, sleep-deprived and tired, the farts had still not subsided. Tammy had opened all the windows and doors, gasping. By bedtime, my bowels were still putting on a musical, one with both an auditory and olfactory score. Sighing, Scott endeavoured to ‘massage them out' of me by rubbing my stomach, rather than having me leak gas throughout the night. But a few hours later, it was still going.

‘Benjamin,' Scott finally said. ‘This is a new low. Even for you.' He said this firmly but gently, and in the dark I nodded, understanding. Then I farted. Groaning and waving his hands, Scott got up and opened the windows and doors again. Tammy screamed – she could smell it from the next room. It was official: I was repulsive. But while my bowels continued to spasm, expand, then yawn out sulphurous gas into the night, I couldn't help but think, ‘Being disgusting. That's manly, isn't it?'

You've Got a Friend

Whenever she gets lonely, my mother tells me that friends – real friends, genuine, bona-fide, authentic friends – are rare and hard to find. When you've spent the last thirty years working as a stay-at-home mother of five children, what time do you have to make friends? ‘And what is a friend, anyway?' she asks. ‘How does anyone find real friends?' She says this to draw attention to how fortunate I am –
You have many real friends, Benjamin, and
you are lucky by comparison
– but it usually does nothing but depress the hell out of me. Most of the Christmas cards Mum receives nowadays aren't from friends, but businesses: dentists and chiropractors posting out inkjet print-outs en masse, with impersonal, fill-in-the-blank TOs and FROMs, followed by a reminder to make an appointment in the new year.

Still, every year without fail, Mum receives one Christmas card from an old friend in Ipoh, the regional Malaysian town where both women spent their childhoods. The two have corresponded for nearly fifty years, annual greetings sent across oceans, one for every year since they left primary school. The cards from Mum's Malaysian friend, Aunty Clara, have always been warm and affectionate, almost long-form letters in their loving attention to detail. A childless woman, Aunty Clara always asked how Mum's five children were and how she was coping with the divorce, insisting that Mum should visit Malaysia soon, stressing that she always had spare beds.
Bring
the kids
, she'd write.
I'd love to get to know them properly
.

Aunty Clara's Christmas cards always struck me as nonjudgmental and snoop-free: just friendly hellos and gentle shout-outs to let Mum know she was thinking of her and – even if my mother didn't believe it – that God was watching over her. Aunty Clara finished each card with ‘Yours in Christ.' Sometimes the cards would go a little further and slip in gentle proclamations about how blessed we all were, how Jesus sacrificed himself for our sins, and how we should never forget the blood he shed for us and the never-ending glory of it all.

The religious interjections were supposed to be subtle, but Aunty Clara's segues were a little too obvious. From details of her home life – to Jesus. From anecdotes about her dogs – to Jesus. From stories of her trip to Canada – to Jesus. As kids, Clara and my mother had both attended Ave Maria, a private Catholic convent school staffed by severe, straight-backed nuns. Clearly, the Christianity had stuck with Aunty Clara; Mum, not so much. ‘I believe in a higher something,' Mum told me, ‘but I'm not into, like,
God-God-God
. Sometimes I talk to God, but I don't need to go to church to do that.' Religion made some people go crazy, she said.

Despite the Christianity, Aunty Clara's Christmas cards never failed to make Mum smile and reminisce. She would read them out loud, before regaling us with stories of Ipoh and her childhood. Her family had been renowned, she told us – a clan of seven astonishingly beautiful children who turned heads on the street when they caught taxis to school. Photographs from that time show boys and girls – my aunties and uncles – with the kind of slick hairstyles and high cheekbones I imagined fuelled childhood crushes throughout the region. Modelling scouts would accost them on the street with their business cards.

As kids, the seven siblings would eat shaved-ice desserts from street stalls, and fruit so ripe and juicy that the flavour exploded in your mouth on impact. The best mangos in Australia, Mum told us, were as nothing compared to the most ordinary Malaysian ones. Over there, rambutans grew like apples and mangosteens sprouted like weeds. Hearing all this as a kid in the suburbs left me breathless. I imagined a tropical landscape where children spontaneously danced in the street, mothers burst into song, and families lived in tree-houses with pet orangutans who wore vests and served coconut juice in the shell. Malaysia: it was a place of unimaginable beauty and exoticism, where Mum was surrounded by friends, and nothing could go wrong.

 

*

 

We were adults when we visited Malaysia for the first time. Tammy, a photographer, had spent the past nine months trekking and working throughout South-East Asia, and was ready to come home. Mum, Michelle and I told her we'd rendezvous with her, and we planned to travel as a foursome, seeing for the first time where Mum had grown up. It had been a long time coming.

Mum picked up the phone and called Aunty Clara, who didn't even need to think about housing us: she immediately said yes, prompting an endless stream of
thank-you
s and
are-you-sure
s from my mother. ‘
Mm-sae gum haak-hae
,' Aunty Clara scolded my mother over the phone. There's no need to be so polite.

When we arrived, a fresh-faced and smiling Uncle Wayne and Aunty Clara received us at the arrivals lounge. ‘Hello!' they said. ‘Yes, yes: it's us!' Aunty Clara had a narrow, bespectacled face and wore her hair in a neat Cleopatra bob. Uncle Wayne never stopped grinning: with his white moustache, he resembled a happy cartoon field-mouse. They were one of those couples who seem immediately familiar, and they spoke fluent English interspersed with bursts of Cantonese, just like us. Mum ran into Aunty Clara's arms and began to cry.

‘You're not going to cry!' Aunty Clara said, laughing and squeezing Mum. Turning to Michelle and me, she said, ‘Your mother has always cried so easily! Even when we were children!'

It wasn't every day I encountered someone who even knew my mother, let alone someone who remembered details about her that I didn't. Surely that constituted a friend, I thought, and I felt happy for them.

We stayed in Kuala Lumpur for a couple of days, making sure we saw the capital before the half-day drive to Ipoh. Up on the observation deck of KL Towers, I realised I'd forgotten to wear my contact lenses or glasses, so the night-time skyline was an exquisite, shiny blur.

 

*

 

As the days went on, I began to feel as though Aunty Clara and Uncle Wayne were somehow in complete denial about Malaysia. We drove to the Batu Caves, a massive Hindu temple built into a limestone cliff-face. On the way, I asked Uncle Wayne what he thought about the Malaysian politician Anwar Ibrahim. He shook his head and whispered quietly: ‘Sodomy. You know about him, huh?' I'd only read the basics of Malaysian politics, but I suggested that the charges against Ibrahim seemed to have been manufactured by a corrupt government. Uncle Wayne shrugged. ‘Maybe the charges are made up,' he said. ‘But every government is corrupt, right? What can you do?'

We drove past mosques, some plain, some exquisite. When Michelle asked what sort of buildings they were, both Aunty Clara and Uncle Wayne claimed not to know. ‘Isn't it a mosque?' Tammy asked. This was met with uneasy silence, the kind children encounter when they blurt out truths they're not meant to know. Aunty Clara sat quietly, nervously stroking the crucifix that dangled from her neck. When we passed a billboard bearing the Malaysian flag, Michelle took the opportunity to change the subject.

‘What about the crescent and the star?' she said. ‘What's that?'

‘You mean on the flag?' Uncle Wayne asked.

‘The crescent is a symbol of Islam,' I ventured.

‘And most Malaysians are Muslim,' Tammy said, ‘so it makes sense that—'

‘Oh, no-no,
no-no-no
,' Aunty Clara and Uncle Wayne interjected. ‘That can't be what it means.' Between them, they started brainstorming alternative meanings. A crescent? On a flag? It must mean something else! Something about night-time or the sky, or space exploration of some kind. Definitely not anything Muslim; nothing to do with Islam.

When we got to the Batu Caves, Aunty Clara refused to come up. ‘I'm okay,' she said, straining and smiling and shooing us with her hands. ‘Go, go! Too slippery for me. And look at the grip on these shoes.' As we started climbing, Mum spoke in hushed, private tones while gripping the handrail. ‘Just so you know, your aunty's not scared of the
steps
,' she said. ‘It's because she's a devout Christian, and this place is …' She pointed to the giant sculpture of Murugan behind us, the Hindu war god. ‘
You know
.'

As we drove to Ipoh, Mum and Tammy asked how Aunty Clara and Uncle Wayne had first met. Immediately, the atmosphere became light and bashful. They were childhood sweethearts.

‘Oh, you know what's really funny?' Aunty Clara asked, slapping her thighs and laughing. ‘Did you know, that because Uncle Wayne was so dark as a teenager, many people thought he was a Muslim! Yes, it's true! I promise! Haha, look at him: this Chinese man, a Muslim! So funny, oh dear me, oh my.' She chuckled with deep, throaty laughter.

‘And what about you, Aunty Clara?' Tammy said. ‘When you first met him, did you mistake him for a Muslim guy too?'

‘No!' Aunty Clara said. ‘No, no, no. Not at
all
. If I even suspected that, I wouldn't have even said
hello
. I wouldn't be so
stupid
.' She was almost spat the word. ‘Like my sister-in-law, Uncle Wayne's sister, going off and marrying a Muslim man. She even converted! Such a
stupid, stupid
woman. Stupid woman.' Aunty Clara said it again softly. ‘So stupid.'

We shifted uncomfortably in the backseat.

 

*

 

When we reached Ipoh, we drove into a clippered, sectioned-off residential estate, where Aunty Clara and Uncle Wayne lived in a massive, peach-coloured house. Unlike other people who offered their homes as a mandatory kindness, Aunty Clara and her husband – Uncle Wayne – had the space. She had inherited money after her father, a politician, was spectacularly assassinated. That inheritance, combined with Wayne's income and their lack of children, had secured them a mansion with an entire wing reserved for guests.

As soon as the Mercedes pulled into the driveway, dogs started barking. One was a small miniature something-or-other, a ferret–sausage hybrid with long toenails that appeared never to have been clipped. As a result, he was constantly tapping over his tiled enclosure like a gay showdog on Broadway. Mum and the girls would share one large room with trundle beds, while I slept in a single-sized room by myself. The first thing I noticed was a wooden crucifix blu-tacked to the wall next to a power-point. When I turned around, I saw the room's main decoration: a large poster that read, ‘I AM THE BREAD, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE.' It was a very literal poster. It featured a photograph of bread. All over the house was Jesus paraphernalia: magnets, framed paintings, pamphlets, wooden carvings that simply said ‘GOD.'