Serenade for a Small Family Read online

  As a percussionist, singer and songwriter, Ingrid Laguna

  has toured Europe, Asia and Australia, recorded several

  albums, and run percussion and songwriting workshops.

  With performance group Ruby Fruit Jungle, she supported

  Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, playing at

  Australia’s biggest entertainment venues. In the Australian

  film industry, Ingrid worked as a crew member on

  numerous television commercials, a telemovie and a short

  film. She has held senior positions in arts administration.

  While in Central Australia, she directed the Northern

  Territory Youth Film Festival and was integral to the

  Kunka Career Conference for Aboriginal Women, the

  Indigenous Music Awards, and music programs for

  Aboriginal youths. She is currently studying media and

  communications at Swinburne University in Melbourne.

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  Sere fo n r a ade

  Small Family

  I N G R I D L A G U N A

  First published in 2010

  Copyright © Ingrid Laguna 2010

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in

  any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

  recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior

  permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968

  (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever

  is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational

  purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has

  given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone:

  (61 2) 8425 0100

  Fax:

  (61 2) 9906 2218

  Email:

  [email protected]

  Web:

  www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available

  from the National Library of Australia

  www.librariesaustralia.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 74237 245 7

  Illustration on page 227 and chapter detail by Madeleine Meyer

  Text design by Lisa White

  Set in 12/18 pt Bembo by Bookhouse, Sydney

  Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  The paper in this book is FSC certified.

  FSC promotes environmentally responsible,

  socially beneficial and economically viable

  management of the world’s forests.

  These are my memories.

  Some names have been changed to protect the

  privacy of others.

  ‘We never know how high we are

  Till we are cal ed to rise . . .’

  Emily Dickinson, 1830–1886

  Part One

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  1

  Mum, Benny and I were having dinner on yet another hot

  December night in Alice Springs when I felt a tightening

  squeeze around my abdomen and lower back, way too

  early in my pregnancy. My fork clinked as I half dropped

  it onto my plate.

  ‘I think I’ll go and sit on the couch for a minute.’

  Mum and Benny turned to me, and the candle flickered.

  I bit the corner of my lip until it stung.

  ‘What’s happening, Inky?’ asked Benny. ‘You okay?’

  The tightening was starting again. ‘Umm . . . not sure . . .

  actually I think I’m going to call the hospital.’

  Two rings and a woman answered. ‘It’s probably nothing,’

  she said. ‘But best to come in and get it checked out.’

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  I N G R I D L A G U N A

  While Benny drove, I lay along the back seat with my

  knees up and my hands splayed over my tightly pregnant

  belly. He was beside me when the obstetrician spoke: ‘I’m

  sorry . . . you’re two centimetres dilated.’

  Ben and I had been through hell to get me pregnant.

  I wailed long and loud from deep deep down, my eyes

  squeezed shut. Not this, not this.

  ‘Shhhh, Inky . . . Shhhh!’ Ben leant over me and turned

  my face towards his. ‘Inky . . . Inky!’ His tone was firm.

  ‘There’s still a chance but you have to stay calm . . .’

  I was given pills to delay labour, and I didn’t give birth

  that night. Contractions were further apart for a while, but

  by morning they were close together again.

  ‘Will the babies be alive when they are born?’ I asked

  the midwife.

  She looked into my eyes and for a couple of beats said

  nothing. ‘They will probably gasp for air and then they will

  stop breathing.’ They wil stop breathing because they are coming

  out too soon, I thought, filled with panic. If they stayed in,

  they would not stop breathing. This is my fault.

  A social worker was sent in to talk to us. ‘Will we see

  the babies?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s up to you,’ she said. ‘Some people like to hold their

  babies and others don’t.’ I tried to picture them, but I didn’t

  know what they would look like. I should want to hold them

  but I don’t know.

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  Serenade for a Small Family

  When the social worker left the room, Benny put his

  head and hand on my stomach and cried. I felt a ropey

  twisting in my chest.

  ‘We have had a taste of being parents only to have it

  taken away,’ he said. ‘I love you very much, my boys.’

  Our doctor was an Indian woman who swished around

  the cool, white hospital corridors in colourful saris. That

  night she stood by my bed in shimmering red and green.

  ‘At this gestation your babies are barely viable,’ she said.

  ‘Another twenty-four hours could mean they have a chance

  of survival.’ She adjusted the sari over her shoulder and

  pushed her glasses further up the bridge of her nose. ‘There

  is a hospital in Adelaide with an excellent neonatal intensive

  care unit,’ she said. ‘They will take you if you make it

  through to tomorrow morning . . . twenty-three weeks and

  one day.’ Another contraction gripped my lower body and

  I rolled onto my side with a groan. The doctor placed her

  warm hand on my hip.

  ‘There’s still some hope,’ she said.

  Here are two things I have learnt: with hope, we are able

  to endure far more than we can ever imagine, and having

  babies in the world is the all-time greatest heavenly delight.

  I’m telling this story because it’s the only way I can quite

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  I N G R I D L A G U N A

  believe it myself. Because this was not the motherhood I

  had planned.

  Like most women, I’ve always been pretty confident I’d

  be a mum one day, and I assumed the role would come

 
; naturally to me. I saw my knotty-haired, knee-grazed

  children and me at beaches or camping or at markets, eating

  exotic food among racks of sarongs and baskets of strange

  fruits. I pictured dressing them like Mum dressed us kids—in

  bohemian knitted vests and beanies, suede miniskirts and

  boots. Their dad and I would throw them in the car to visit

  friends, or pour them out at Mum’s so we could go for wine

  and drawn-out Indian dinners. We would laugh out loud

  as they ran nude around the backyard, and take them on

  planes to Holland, Poland and Vietnam. They would fall

  asleep in our laps at parties, and chase each other around

  the table, eating toast with appelstroop at breakfast. My kids

  would not be fussy eaters or allergic to anything, or have

  hay fever or asthma. They would be bright and beautiful

  and I would be easy with them. So when Benny and I got

  together, I imagined all of this was on the cards.

  On the day we met, in March 2002, I was sitting

  outside my girlfriend’s house in a narrow, treeless street

  in Brunswick, Melbourne, waiting for her to come home.

  It was late afternoon on a muggy day and I was dying for

  one of the cold beers in my bag, but I didn’t have a bottle

  opener. A guy on an old black motorbike turned into the

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  Serenade for a Small Family

  street and pulled up on the other side. When he took off

  his helmet, I saw he had thick, dark, curly hair. (‘ Mooi haar,’

  Mum said later, which is Dutch for ‘nice hair’.) He crossed

  the road towards the house two doors down.

  ‘Excuse me!’ I called out. ‘I was just wondering if you

  have a bottle opener I could use?’

  As he passed the opener into my hand, he stood close

  enough for me to see his brown eyes and the dark stubble

  covering his jaw. There was an intensity about him. When

  my friend Nic came home, I suggested we invite him to join

  us. She agreed (she had already told me about ‘motorbike

  boy’ who lived two doors down) and courageously knocked

  on his door.

  ‘I’m making veggie burgers on the barbie,’ he said. ‘Do

  you want to bring your beers over here?’

  Moody acoustic music played as we walked through to

  his backyard; the familiar singer’s voice rose and fell in a

  melody I knew. I was impressed by the ambient lighting in

  the living room; only later did I learn that it was a choice

  based on energy efficiency rather than aesthetics.

  We sat around a card table laden with our dirty plates

  and beer bottles in his tiny concrete backyard late into the

  night. He told us he worked in renewable energy, and was

  keen to get involved in a program that was installing solar

  systems in small, remote Aboriginal communities in the

  Northern Territory. To me, he was gorgeous.

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  I N G R I D L A G U N A

  As Nic and I walked down his corridor towards the front

  door, I stopped and turned to him.

  ‘I should give you my phone number,’ I said boldly, past

  the fluttering in my stomach.

  He finally called me the following Sunday, inviting me to

  go with him on his motorbike to the Mornington Peninsula.

  ‘Really? Wow! When did you want to leave?’ I asked.

  ‘In about . . . ah . . . twenty minutes?’

  ‘Right . . . umm . . .’ (As if I had to think about it.)

  ‘Okay!’

  I hung up the phone and yelled in the direction of

  my housemate’s room. ‘Shit! I’ve got twenty minutes!

  That guy Ben rang!’ Carrie watched from her bedroom

  window as he came up the path to the front door, then

  she turned to me and indicated with a thumbs-up that he

  was alright. He had brought me a leather jacket as well as

  a helmet that I was relieved to be able to squeeze over my

  size large Polish head. As we rode, I held onto Ben and

  sang in my helmet. That afternoon we swam in the ocean

  and walked along the rocks. At his dad’s beach house he

  made me Balinese fish curry with lemongrass, and we sat

  outside, talking, with a blanket wrapped around us. Later

  that night I pulled the plug from the kitchen sink of soapy

  water and flicked off the rubber gloves. (I can’t believe I

  did the dishes on our first date!) When I turned around,

  Ben kissed me, then manoeuvred me towards the couch

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  Serenade for a Small Family

  with his mouth on mine, at the same time expertly, single-

  handedly, unhooking my bra.

  The Royal Flying Doctors flew Benny and me from Alice

  Springs to Adelaide on a tiny plane that buzzed like a

  lawnmower. Pethidine kept me woozy, and I lay on my side

  with my face close to the wall. Benny sat beside the pilot

  and reached back to stroke my hair. The young Sri Lankan

  registrar smiled politely in my direction, then looked back

  down at the folded hands in her lap.

  The midwife beside her was rough and friendly: ‘Hi,

  sweetie . . . can you let me know every time you feel a

  contraction starting?’ The pethidine felt good and took

  away some of the worry. There was another patient on the

  plane—sitting upright, sprouting wires and leads, with his

  back to me.

  ‘It’s a good thing you couldn’t see his face,’ Mum said

  later. ‘He didn’t look too good.’ Mum hardly ever cries,

  but she cried when I was slid on a stretcher into that plane

  to Adelaide.

  When we landed, the ambulance wasn’t there to take

  us to the hospital, so we waited in the hangar, and I kept

  having contractions in the cool outside air. I was relieved to

  have made the flight without giving birth, but I didn’t want

  to have the babies in an aeroplane hangar either. Finally,

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  I N G R I D L A G U N A

  the ambulance arrived, and two men in green overalls and

  gumboots manoeuvred my stretcher into the back and drove

  us to the hospital.

  As I was ferried along a corridor, a wheel on my trolley

  bed scraped the f loor amid the sound of feet shuff ling.

  ‘Take her to the delivery suite . . . Room 12,’ someone said,

  which struck me as sounding luxurious. We turned into a

  starchy, odourless room. A small crowd of doctors, nurses

  and registrars followed, tripping over each other to deliver

  scary facts and statistics about premature babies to Benny

  and me. Bewildered, we looked from one to the next,

  until Benny tilted his head back and angrily punctuated

  the room: ‘Excuse me!’

  Heads turned towards him. ‘Could we all just move out

  into the corridor please!’ He herded them out and firmly

  reminded them how important it was for me to stay calm.

  ‘And only come in one at a time, if you have to come in

  at al !’

  Through the night and into the next day the contractions

  kept coming, only minutes apart. I was exhausted. Dad flew

  over from Sydney. He brought me books and a bag of ripe

  purple cherries. He and Benny sat beside my bed while


  we talked and ate the fruit. When a contraction came, we

  stopped talking. Benny rubbed my lower back and timed it.

  I blew out quick puffs of air to help me through the pain

  because I’d seen people do that on TV.

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  Serenade for a Small Family

  ‘Knock knock?’ A man’s face appeared from behind the

  beige curtain by my bed.

  ‘Hi . . . come in.’

  I adjusted my pillows and sat up. Benny looked up from

  his newspaper. A labouring woman groaned somewhere on

  the ward, and the fug of potato and leek soup lingered from

  lunch. Two doctors—an obstetrician and a neonatologist—

  came in and said they needed to talk to us. They had

  likeable, intelligent faces.

  ‘We need to know how much you want us to intervene . . .’

  said the neonatologist. ‘At this gestation—twenty-three and

  a half weeks—their chances are slim.’ We’re going to discuss

  this? Benny sat forward with his elbows on his knees and his

  hands clasped. ‘And of those who survive, there can be long-

  term health issues . . . sometimes disabilities.’ I swallowed.

  ‘Some people want us to do everything in our power for

  their babies. You need to be involved in this decision.’

  I recalled a conversation with a midwife earlier that day.

  ‘About fifty per cent of babies born at twenty-four weeks’

  gestation survive,’ she had said, with a warning tone in

  her voice and a stark determination to kill any false hope.

  ‘Even then they may well have learning difficulties, or be

  deaf or vision-impaired. Sometimes there may be severe

  disability . . .’ I had suddenly badly wanted to lie down to

  hold onto my pregnancy. I wil not deliver early, I had vowed.

  ‘Before twenty-four weeks . . .’ she had said. ‘Well . . . their

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  I N G R I D L A G U N A

  chances are significantly less. Before then—the baby’s lungs

  are not yet fully developed.’

  Now Benny and I exchanged looks. I was lost for words—

  not exactly typical for me. Ben spoke up: ‘They have to have

  good quality of life,’ he said. ‘That’s the thing . . . quality of

  life.’ Benny—my rock. Calm and clear. The neonatologist

  looked down at his folder and nodded slowly.

  ‘Yes,’ I added, awkwardly. ‘A good life . . .’ What does

  intervention mean? I wondered. And how will these doctors

  interpret what we mean by quality of life?