Serenade for a Small Family Page 3
We swam laps at the town pool, where trashy radio
squeezed through tiny speakers and Aboriginal kids endlessly
bombed and pummelled each other in the water. We shopped
at Kmart and wound up in singlets and t-shirts matching
our friends who did the same. Locals chuckled as visiting
tourists took photos of the Aboriginal kids from behind fly
nets, lifting them only to wipe the sweat off their foreheads.
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Serenade for a Small Family
To my delight, creativity flourished in Alice, and the
artists’ community was lively. We swooned over the beanies
at the Beanie Festival, and joined the jumping throng at a
Midnight Oil gig against a starry backdrop. We sat cross-
legged in the Todd riverbed sand amid a scattering of fires
and a familiar crowd for an Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter
gig on a cold June night. Slapping at the odd mozzy, I lay
with my head on Benny’s chest to watch films under a sky
jam-packed with stars.
Ben was going out bush a lot for work, and I was scared
at night without him. ‘I need a Ben-bear,’ I said. ‘You
know . . . to cuddle at night. A substitute.’
After a trip to the tip shop, Ben disappeared into the
outside laundry. Swoosh . . . swoosh . . . swoosh. That afternoon
my brand-new tip shop Ben-bear hung by his ears, dripping
on the clothesline. I got shivers. What a man, I thought.
‘You’re going to need an operation. It’s called a “Manual . . .
Removal . . . of the . . . Placenta”.’ The man spoke slowly,
as if it were a really technical title.
Benny couldn’t come into theatre. I was losing blood
in waves. In the starkly fluorescent lit room, I sat with my
legs dangling over the side of the operating table, flopped
forward over a woman with broad solid shoulders and dyed
blonde hair. ‘I’m fainting,’ I said, close to her ear.
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I N G R I D L A G U N A
‘We’re fainting here!’ she announced.
A needle was inserted into my spine until I became numb
from the waist down, and then a sheet was hung in front of
me so I couldn’t see my body. I looked at the anaesthetist
on my left for reassurance, but his face remained cool and
remote. I turned to my right, where a man smiled warmly
from behind his mask: ‘Do you want to hold my hand?’ he
asked. I took it gratefully, and he leant closer: ‘I’ve got a son
too,’ he said. ‘Now your husband will always come second
to your boys.’ Although I was not yet convinced—I hadn’t
even laid eyes on them—I appreciated him saying I had
boys, as if we were playing a game in which I really was a
mum. It was the first moment the reality had dawned on
me—they were small and they needed help, but I had two
baby boys and the thought gave me a wash of happiness.
‘I feel sorry for your husband,’ he continued. ‘My name’s
Mike . . . You’re doing well there.’ Mike talked to me and
held my hand throughout the surgery. His kindness took
the cold edge off the room, and I was so grateful I could
have kissed him.
When it was over I was wheeled to the ‘recovery area’,
where the lights were dim and the room was grey. I was
cold, so someone wrapped a towel around my head to warm
me up. There was no one else recovering. Benny walked in,
wearing a hospital gown over his jeans and those shower-
cap things over his hair and feet. He looked calm, and it
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Serenade for a Small Family
was good to see his face. Ben would be doing this whole thing
better than I am, I thought .
My trolley bed was wheeled into the intensive care
nursery so I could see the babies. Benny had already seen
them while I was in theatre, but he came too. We turned
off a corridor into a wide, busy room to be greeted by beeps
and alarms of varying intensity. Another world. The walls
were lined with closed perspex cots that had hand-holes cut
into the sides. Each one was hooked up to a screen the size
of a small television, displaying wiggly lines and numbers.
Women in matching uniform shirts hovered around the
cots. The room was too brightly lit. I was wheeled up close
to a cot labelled ‘Twin 1 of Laguna, Ingrid’.
Twin 1 didn’t look at all like a baby, but he was perfectly
formed. Each of his hands was no bigger than a ten-
cent piece, and cardboard taped to the cot said he was
26.6 centimetres in length. There was clear plastic around
him and a bright, warm light shone on him from above.
There was a tube coming out of his belly button. His eyes
were sealed closed, his skin was translucent, and he wasn’t
moving. He wore a Barbie doll-sized white woollen beanie
and had fine blond fuzz around his temples and forehead.
Ventilator tubing was taped to his tiny face. His ribs, like
matches, showed through his fine skin, and his miniature
chest rose and fell subtly with the ventilator’s rhythm. His
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I N G R I D L A G U N A
hands were behind his head as if he were sunbaking under
the light.
A chirpy midwife sat perched on a stool beside his cot.
She brought her face close to mine as I levered myself onto
an elbow to peer in, and then started talking without leaving
any spaces between her words. She was wearing strong,
sweet perfume and I began to feel sick.
‘I can’t . . . I just need some air,’ I said, waving a hand
between us.
‘Time to move,’ said Benny.
I was wheeled into a small side room, where one cot,
parked in the middle, was labelled ‘Twin 2 of Laguna,
Ingrid’. I wished their cots were together. Twin 2 was
smaller than Twin 1. The fuzz around his temples and
forehead was dark and so were his eyebrows. He wore a
miniature blue beanie and had his head to one side.
‘Oh wow! . . . He’s so tiny.’ A red light flashed on the
bottom of the screen next to his cot and a beeping alarm
increased in pitch. ‘What’s that? Is he okay?’
‘He’s okay,’ said his midwife.
Benny wheeled me back to the delivery room, where
a fold-out bed was made up for him next to mine. I was
given two blood transfusions by a brisk midwife with red-
painted lips; I tried not to look at the bag of blood hanging
at eye level by my bed.
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Serenade for a Small Family
In the days that followed, the reality of the situation
rolled in: we had two living baby boys on life support a
long way from home, with a long way to go to get out of
there, if ever. I knew the road would be rocky and there
were no exits. It would be long or short, but bumpy either
way. How will we get through this? I asked myself. What does
the future hold?
29
3
One bright Alice morning I put on my favourite blue dress
and took my guitar along to a songwriters’ gathering. A
woman greeted me.
open, clay-coloured home clinging shakily to a glass of water.
A voice came from inside: ‘Hello! I’m in the bath!’
It was just the three of us. Karlie and I sat in cane chairs,
talking and taking turns to sing our songs, looking out at
the sandy fire pit in her backyard, then shyly down at our
guitars as we sang. The bath woman emerged with short
dripping dreads and a strong, attractive face. Georgie sat
down at the piano and stunned me with her full voice: ‘I
like the filth I do-oo . . .’
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Serenade for a Small Family
We sat around, and I told them about the years I had
spent playing congas and djembe, songwriting and singing
in Melbourne with a feisty, vivacious, mostly girl band—
Ruby Fruit Jungle. We had started off on a raised stage in
the corner of a tapas bar, playing dancey, infectious Brazilian
and African rhythms on a bunch of different drums and
percussion; then we brought in melody instruments and
vocal harmonies to perform original songs in a mash of
styles at a weekly Brunswick Street pub gig.
From there our confidence grew, and so did our
following. We toured the country and played every kind
of gig—street festivals, dance parties, pubs, schools and
universities. Our side-stepping feet became tap shoes on
the temporary wood of outdoor stages. An expert caked
our faces in makeup for national daytime television. ‘She
made my lips look weird,’ I told Betty. ‘And her breath
smelt like beef stroganoff.’
We played corporate gigs, hippy gigs and posh gigs,
and held percussion and songwriting workshops. Summers
were spent packed into a bus with a trailer-load of drums,
a driver, roadie, sound engineer and one or two current
boyfriends—singing, laughing and fighting our way up
Australia’s east coast.
Our driver, Lindsay, drove for hours in silence, smoking
rollies out the window in his favourite greasy Guatemalan
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I N G R I D L A G U N A
beanie. Late one afternoon, the van was rumbling along,
filled with the pious tones of our five-part harmony practice,
when he launched boldly into song:
Oh . . . I know a song that’ll get on yer nerves, get on yer
nerves, get on yer nerves
I know a song that’ll get on yer nerves, get on yer nerves,
get on yer nerves . . .
He looped the infuriating tune until we all screamed
and Rachel threw a pillow hard at the back of his head.
Between tours, I immersed myself in drum camps, drum
lessons, and drumming parties. Our east coast tours peaked
on festival stages—in skimpy clothes we played big drums
to a dancing throng. Then we would squeeze into crowds
to dance barefoot to other bands. Band dynamics were push
and pull—tension and belly laughs in band rooms, tour
buses and on stages; fighting over set lists, rehearsal venues,
musical direction and clothes. One afternoon, I turned up
at a pub for a sound check and Rachel was sitting on the
step, eating takeaway sushi and wearing my top.
‘Hey . . . I don’t remember leaving that at your place!’
‘You didn’t . . . I bought my own.’
‘What do you mean?’
Rachel leant forward for a wedge of rice and salmon.
‘I went to Dotti’s. Bought my own,’ she said.
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Serenade for a Small Family
A wet beer-mat smell filtered through the pub doors
and a man’s voice tested a microphone: ‘One . . . tsoo . . .
One . . . tsoo.’
‘You mean after you saw mine?’
‘Yeah . . .’
‘Shit, Rach, it’s exactly the same!’
‘But it’s so cute!’
We loved and hated our own music, relishing the deep
satisfaction of a good gig and the thrill of getting better,
and struggling with frustration at the time it took to learn
an instrument. ‘It’s harder to keep time playing slow,’ said
my drummer friend Scotty, our four congas parked between
us. ‘So it’s the best way to practise.’
I set my metronome to a slow sixty beats per minute, and
practised until my forearms ached and my calloused palms
and fingers stung. On our first album, the band recorded
nine tracks in twenty-four hours to save on studio costs;
then we dashed around the streets, plastering walls and
lamp poles with our posters, keeping an eye out for police.
We were the support act for Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant
and Jimmy Page on their 1996 Australian tour. From the
stages of the Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane entertainment
centres, we watched the crowds pour in like streams of ants
and played to rows of faces we couldn’t see for the lights
in our eyes. On request, we played at a wake for a young
couple who had loved the band and died in a car crash.
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I N G R I D L A G U N A
From the stage we watched their shocked friends dancing
wildly—whooping and jumping, holding each other and
sobbing, then letting go to dance again with tear-wet faces.
We were offered a thousand dollars to be dressed in ball
gowns for a five-minute appearance at an extravagant Jewish
wedding, on the proviso that Amy shave her armpits. ‘No
way!’ she said. We got the gig anyway, and burst into the
chandeliered room drumming, dancing for the well-dressed
crowd. Heads turned, mouths opened and faces lit up over
crystal glasses. We circled the room and exited minutes later,
leaving an elated and cheering party in our wake.
We boarded a plane to work in Hong Kong and
Europe, queuing at airports with trolleys piled high with
battered drum cases covered in ‘FRAGILE’ stickers. At
Scotland’s Edinburgh Festival, we played to full houses in
the Spiegeltent and survived ten straight days of 2 a.m. gigs
at a late-night comedy venue, offering high-energy music
relief from back-to-back stand-up comedians, with whom
we mingled and flirted between sets, while Rachel’s six-
year-old slept curled on a blanket under a table.
By day I envied the rest of the band, who slept deep into
the afternoon. I would tiptoe to the bathroom through the
debris of snoring, farting musicians, and wash the pub smoke
from my hair and the smudged mascara from under my eyes.
Then I lay soaking my aching limbs in a hot bath, alone
with the soft plonk of the tap dripping into the bath water.
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Serenade for a Small Family
In Hong Kong we squeezed into a miniature apartment
on Lantau Island. ‘Bags the separate room,’ I said, dumping
my suitcase on the floor of the tiny space, leaving the others
to resentfully share bunks and the couch. Each day we
herded with a crush of bodies onto a ferry and leant against
its railings to watch the approach of the mainland’s smog-
wrapped thicket of buildings, as we cut a path through the
&nb
sp; f loating chip packets and Coke cans. Our show was the
centrepiece on the ground floor of a spangly shopping mall
entertaining three levels of shoppers; between sets we were
mobbed by fine-limbed children and photographed by their
parents. The tour coincided with England’s handover of
Hong Kong back to China. The QE2 ocean liner holding
Prince Charles sat offshore while Jackie Chan joined
celebrations on the mainland. By night, crowds massed for
the pounding of fireworks; acrid smoke filled our nostrils
and stung our eyes. Boom! Boom! Boom!
In Ireland we played a frenzied Dublin gig, and I kissed
a local boy just for his accent. The next day we drove for
hours and arrived in the dark at a tiny pub, wall to wall
with cheery people holding oversized mugs of frothy black
beer. We rubbed the car sleeps from our eyes and formed
a conga line from the tour bus to the pub entrance so we
could offload case after case of drums, stands and jangling
hand percussion. After the show, Betty asked the publican
for directions to our accommodation.
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I N G R I D L A G U N A
‘Oh . . . yes, of course,’ the woman replied, turning to
address the bubbling crowd in her thick, dancey accent:
‘Hello there, folks! Who would like to give these lovely
ladies a room for the night?’
‘But . . .’ Betty clasped the woman’s arm. ‘But the
agreement included accommodation . . .’
‘Oh, there’s no problem with accommodation here!’
We were billeted out to willing audience members, who
peeled themselves from their bar stools to take us home to
their couches and guest beds at closing time.
During our rock star stint, we lapped up all the perks—
the limelight, joints in band rooms, dress-ups, applause, boys,
travel and stunning music moments. I finally left the band
when I found myself alone against a push for an increasingly
pop sound in the pursuit of commercial success. Our music
didn’t move me any more. My playing wasn’t challenged,
and I needed a change.
By that time I was waking most nights, numb from
my elbows to my fingertips, and spending a week out of
every five lying on my side, unable to walk due to the pain
emanating from my lower back. (Platform boots and djembe
drums—an unhealthy combination.) I said I was quitting
and fled to a girlfriend’s house in tears, overwhelmed by