When Things Are Alive They Hum by Hannah Bent

Author:Hannah Bent
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ultimo Press
Published: 2021-06-11T00:00:00+00:00

‘You can’t give up,’ my father thundered. ‘I won’t allow it.’

It was the first time I had ever heard Dad raise his voice.

I crawled out of bed, still wrapped in my feather duvet, and tiptoed along the corridor to my parents’ room. The door was ajar, and I could see Dad pacing back and forth.

‘Why won’t you just give the chemo another shot, damn it?’

‘James, it’s too late,’ Mum replied, her voice soft. ‘You heard the doctor – almost all my marrow has been replaced by abnormal –’

‘We need to get another opinion,’ Dad interrupted.

‘I can’t put myself through it again,’ she said.

For a moment, there was silence. I moved closer to the door. I could see Mum sitting on their four-poster bed. Her orange bandana was wrapped around her head, long sleeves hid the red and purple marks that had spread across her skin.

‘My darling, you need to accept there is nothing more that can be done.’ She reached out her hand and Dad came into view. He sat on the bed beside her and buried his head in her chest. His back shook as he wept. It made me feel wobbly, as if the ground beneath me could give way at any moment. I turned and shuffled back to my room.

I was in bed when I heard the creak of my door opening. Mum. I could sense her watching me, something she had started to do most nights since she came home from hospital. I sat up in bed and turned on the bedside light.

She blinked. ‘I didn’t mean to wake you.’ She approached my bed. Her skin was so thin, I could see the movement of her bones beneath it. ‘Go back to sleep, my darling.’ Her hand felt cool against my forehead.

‘Why have you given up? Why won’t you have more chemo?’ I asked.

She went still. Then, recovering herself, she whispered, ‘Don’t worry about me, darling. You’re too young to worry.’ She switched off my light and walked to the door, pausing once, a silhouette in the doorway, to look back at me.

As the days passed, Mum got worse. All she did was sleep. She barely ate. She no longer had the strength to stand in my bedroom doorway at night.

Dad rarely left her side.

I continued to go to school as usual and was waiting at the gate one afternoon for Wài Pó to collect me when the mother of my friend Pearl Wong came over to talk to me.

‘Marlowe, dear,’ Mrs Wong said, ‘how is your poor mother?’

‘She’s very sick,’ I told her, adding, ‘She told my dad she won’t do chemo anymore.’

To my surprise, Mrs Wong nodded her approval. ‘Your mother has made an excellent decision,’ she said. ‘The western way is not as good as the eastern way in cases like this.’

‘Really?’ I said.

‘Chemo works by treating toxins with more toxins. What use is that?’ She threw her hands into the air. ‘Chinese medicine, on the other hand, does not attack the body’s qì.

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