Meet Me at the Intersection

by Ambelin Kwaymullina

  Anyhow, I ended up spending most of the trip with the Chinese students, since I couldn’t stand Raymond and Grace. They’d spent most of their trip with their heads huddled together like a little self-contained satellite unit, talking, talking, talking. ‘Cultural capital’, ‘enlightening experiences’, and ‘ethnic enhancement’ was some of the shit I heard coming from them, but their pricey white runners were always clean and their laughter like little dying splutters down a drainhole.

  My Chinese mates and I, we did fun stuff like going outdoor swimming, kite flying and I even taught my basketball bro Dan some footy, which he called ‘The Olive Ball’ coz of its shape. Grace and Raymond kept to themselves, since I think they hadn’t expected the Chinese students to be so boisterous (Grace’s word for bogan, I think). And they kept trying to foist their shitty Chinese onto the students, who all just wanted to test out their English.

  I was all teary at the airport before we left, and hugged Basketball Dan and my Chinese bros, and said, ‘Wo Men Shi Hao Ping Guo’, which I thought meant We are all good friends, and they’d laughed at me and whacked me on the back and called me Fatty Apple because what I’d really said was, We are all good apples.

  When we arrived back in Perth I’d said, ‘So long suckers’ to Grace and Raymond and didn’t hang around long enough to hear them pontificate over my obnoxious self. But when I looked behind me one last time, I saw they were kissing.

  Sick.

  So anyhow, I was a bit depressed when I returned. Tommo wasn’t talking to me anymore because I’d gone on the trip and he hadn’t. The new school term had just started, and I had to give a ten-minute talk during assembly about my Rotary cultural tour. I came back as this mini-celeb, but that lasted only a day or so. No-one understood how much I’d belonged in Shandong, how those school kids didn’t seem to have our bullshit obsession with popularity.

  I started googling hot famous Chinese chicks after school because there was nothing better for me to do, and even if there was, there was no-one to do it with. I mean, what Aussie Year 10 would want to go kite-flying? I began to think, man, people here are seriously missing out on good fun. Fan Bingbing popped up on my screen and I imagined her poking me in the belly with one of her red nails. And that Gong Li chick had a great pair of knockers on her, even though she was, like, fifty. The truth was, that old geezer Confucius was onto something, with his sayings about travel, and opening your mind and all that. Because suddenly, I felt more alone than ever and the irony was that I was back at home, with my mum and dad, my school where I played footy, and my old mates (except Tommo).

  ‘You’re a bloody bore,’ complained Ed one time after school while we were waiting at the bus stop. ‘All you ever talk about now is ching chong hot pot.’

  ‘Don’t be racist,’ I replied. ‘It’s Chongqing hot pot.’

  That’s when I noticed her. I wonder why I’d never noticed her before at the bus stop — tall, slouchy, long black hair in a limp ponytail. I was standing close enough that I could see she had a little scar on her chin, which I thought made her look bad-arse in a good way. Maybe she played soccer or something. She was in Year 11 but I didn’t know this that day when I turned to her and said hello. When I’d said Ni Hao to all those Shandong girls, they’d always said Ni Hao right back and giggle and wave. But she told me to go forth and multiply with myself. How up herself! She wasn’t even that hot, to be honest.

  ‘You like the Asian girls now?’ nudged Ed. ‘Remember about the last stop …’

  ‘Don’t be a sexist homophone,’ I said, and he laughed and laughed but I didn’t get what was so funny.

  The next afternoon, Ed was away and there were no empty seats on the bus except next to her, so I plonked myself down. I knew her name was Bonnie because I’d heard the plate-faced boy behind us poke her in the shoulder and say, ‘Bonnie, heh, I think he likes you.’

  Ignoring Plate Face, Bonnie stuck her earphones straight into her ears to avoid talking to any of us. I decided she wasn’t from China after all, probably just some stuck-up rich international student. Girls here are cold, I typed into Google translate, turning it into Simplified Chinese and then messaging it to Basketball Dan through WeChat. Fatty, he replied five minutes later, Return! We miss you. Set you up with a sweet milk tea sister. Dan didn’t need to use a translation program, his English was pretty good, but he appreciated my running everything I typed through Google Translate, because it cracked him up. What the hell was a milk tea sister? Was it some kind of sex thing I was meant to get?

  Bonnie looked over then, and saw my screen. I covered it up. ‘Private.’

  ‘Why are you on Wechat?’ she demanded, like the whole of Chinese Messenger belonged to her just because she happened to be Asian.

  ‘Because unlike you, I have friends,’ I mouthed.

  ‘Up yours.’ She faced forwards, and went back to listening to her Taylor Swift or whatever white-wannabe shit she was listening to.

  I couldn’t Google ‘milk tea sister’ on my phone because then she’d see and be down my throat if something weird and porny popped up. So I typed in what is milk tea sister and ran it through Google translate, and popped it into Wechat for Basketball Dan. Just at that moment Bonnie poked her nose into my screen again. ‘What, you can write Chinese? What the hell?’

  ‘Stop reading my private messages!’

  ‘Hang on.’ She took her earphones out and really stared at me then. ‘I know you,’ she finally said. ‘You’re that boy who went to China; you won that Rotary competition.’ Then she nodded like she knew something about me that I didn’t, when I knew that no-one knew sweet bugger all about me now, not even myself.

  When I got home, and googled ‘milk tea sister’ and some smiling girl holding a cup of bubble tea popped up, at first I thought WTF? This kid looks thirteen, and she’s meant to be the hottest thing in China? Sick. Then I saw more pictures of her on Google images, at the age she was now. Pretty, even with not much make-up on. But the thing that really got to me, that almost made my eyes smart like a sooky mofo, was that except for her weird glow-in-the-dark filtered whiteness, she reminded me so much of that school in Shandong; those girls and guys that had surrounded me every day with their humour and finger-jabbing jibes that were never nasty or loaded.

  And I got it — I understood why the milk tea sister was their big thing. She represented something simple, something pure. Something like friendship that could blossom into romance — hooking up was not the first thing you thought about when you saw milk tea sister, but having a laugh, getting teased by her, having your ear pulled, her kicking your arse at PE and gloating over it.

  A few afternoons later, I’m sitting by myself and this time I’m on the bus first, and who should sit next to me but Bonnie, when there were lots of empty seats around. I ignored her and looked out the window. Just because I went to China didn’t mean she had the right to think I’d been hitting on her.

  My phone pinged with a message. I didn’t check it because I didn’t want her snooping over my shoulder like last time.

  ‘What makes you think I can read Chinese?’ she asked, as if she’d just read my mind.

  ‘Umm, I dunno, maybe the way you almost broke your neck trying to read my messages last time.’

  ‘Well, I can’t.’

  ‘You Thai or something?’

  ‘No, I’m Chinese.’

  ‘Yeah, but you were born here, right?’

  ‘No. I was born in China. I came here when I was two,’ she said. ‘My parents sent me to Chinese school every Saturday until I was fifteen, and I learned sweet eff all.’

  ‘Yeah, those Chinese characters, they’re a bit tricky. After a while, they all start to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s signature, hey.’

  Bonnie actually cracked up over that.

  ‘I miss China,’ I sighed. ‘Everyone loved me there.’

  ‘Well, yeah. I don’t know how that feels,’ she replied. ‘Because you know — people don’t generally like the Chinese he
re. We’re either fake refugees or millionaires set to take over the city skyline.’ Then she said, ‘I guess it must feel good. Being among your people, and that.’

  I didn’t know if she was taking the piss out of me, like she thought I was one of those white kids who thought they were true gangsta because they listened to rap and had one black friend. Except, of course, in my case, substitute black with Asian.

  ‘Maybe I should go back.’

  It was then that I realised she was talking about herself.

  ‘Nah,’ I replied. ‘You’re good here.’ I turned to look at her, but quickly, like I was just glancing instead of fully checking her out.

  ‘Do you have a thing for Asian chicks?’

  Would she think I was a creep if I told her about the milk tea sister? Those girls in China had treated me like an equal. They were affectionate in their poking, their laughter was genuine. And the guys, they’d all thought I was cool as, because I’d looked like a fat Ed Sheeran; which is to say, a new and improved version of an old favourite.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I answered honestly.

  To my surprise, she didn’t yell at me. Most of the kids were off the bus by now with only a few insignificant Year 8s left. We sat in silence for a bit. ‘Heh,’ I suddenly blurted out. ‘You know, during our trip, there were these two white kids, Grace and Raymond, who had clearly been learning Chinese before they arrived. On the plane there I felt so ignorant. They opened their Lonely Planet Guidebooks and pointed places out to each other, and talked about cultural taboos and shit. They talked as if I wasn’t there, because they thought I was a feral. Anyhow, during the whole two weeks, those two didn’t even end up visiting the places they’d flagged with post-it notes in their guidebooks. They were horrified they were spending two weeks in a shitty little state school filled with kids who wore tracksuit pants, who were obsessed with Game of Thrones and Prison Break.’

  ‘Oh I see,’ said Bonnie. ‘They expected real Orientals.’ She snickered in a way which I quite liked.

  ‘This is the last stop,’ said the bus driver.

  ‘Do you like Game of Thrones?’ I asked her as we got off the bus.

  ‘This isn’t your stop is it?’

  I’d missed it ages ago.

  ‘I’ll get the bus going the other way back,’ I replied.

  ‘Are you following me home?’ she accused.

  ‘Nah,’ I stammered, suddenly without a clue about what I was even doing. ‘I mean, I’ll walk you home. If you want.’

  ‘You can’t,’ she told me.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You can’t walk me home.’

  Unbelievable! Because we’d been having such a good chat, this really pissed me off. What a princess! I was about to tell her that this was a free country and I could walk down any footpath I wanted, but there was just something about her tone that made me not dare. Something that told me that she was hiding something, like the punchline of a joke.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘If my parents see me walking back with a guy, they’ll murder me.’

  ‘Why, what’s wrong with me?’

  ‘Not you specifically. Just any guy. Any random stranger over the age of eleven. They don’t trust anyone. They’re crazy strict. They’ll kill you too.’

  I laughed. She was funny, staring at me with those big unblinking eyes. Until I realised she didn’t seem to be kidding.

  ‘My dad’s got this weapon,’ she said. ‘He made it by tying a cleaver to the end of a broom handle.’

  Now this chick sounded really crazy. I regretted getting off at her stop.

  ‘What kind of person makes this sort of thing?’ I exclaimed.

  ‘We own a milk bar,’ she said defensively. ‘People come and steal things.’

  ‘But that’s no reason to make an illegal medieval battle axe!’

  ‘He’s never used it,’ she said. ‘It’s just there to keep us safe.’

  I told her that I didn’t realise owning a milk bar was as dangerous as, say, having a partnership in a Triad-owned nightclub.

  ‘You think you know everything don’t you?’ she retorted. ‘Just because you won that trip to China, now you think you have this secret knowledge about all things Chinese. Well, sorry to tell you this, Caucasian Kongzi, but you know sweet eff all about what it means to have morons come up to you and do the slanty-chinky eyes thing with their fingers, to have kids pretend to speak your language going ‘ninnongnang’ in the yard, to be called “the last stop” …’

  My face burned with embarrassment.

  ‘To have hooligans pinch things every week from your dad’s shop, bluntly saying, ‘It’s fair game, youse steal our jobs, so we steal from youse,’ and to have them drive by and chuck rocks through the window so huge that the glass breaks and hits you in the chin so bad you need stitches.’

  I really couldn’t look at her then. Coz if it hadn’t been for me winning that trip, I knew in a few years’ time I would consider it a hoot to drive by with Tommo to scratch the new Toyotas of the Asians in our neighbourhood, coz Tommo told me that the government gave reffos new cars but hardworking Aussies like us had to suffer with second-hand Fords.

  In fact, the angrier Bonnie got, the more she reminded me of me. She was bumbling, and awkward, and even stuttered a bit. I knew what it was like to feel that sort of burning, powerless rage. Yes, I had returned to my usual crappy life, but I now suddenly realised that things weren’t that much better for Bonnie. She was just better practised at being invisible, but no matter how hard she tried, she could never fully hide from people like Tommo and me.

  I was really scared that she was going to cry now. ‘I’m sorry your dad’s shop got windowed. That’s real shit.’ I hesitated before I blurted this out: ‘But the scar on your chin, it makes you look real bad-arse.’

  She stood straighter, and stared right at me. ‘I know,’ she said, looking pleased.

  ‘Well, if I can’t walk you home, I guess I’d better cross to the other side and wait for my bus.’

  ‘Okay.’ She gave me a little wave before she turned around and walked down the street. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow then.’

  It was a full half-an-hour before the next bus came, and there was barely any shade on the footpath. The last stop was just a pole with no shelter, but somehow, I didn’t mind the wait.

  REBECCA LIM

  Rebecca Lim is an illustrator, lawyer and acclaimed author, who was born in Singapore of ethnic Chinese parents. She migrated to Australia as a child in the early 1970s and has lived across rural and urban locations in Queensland and Victoria. This story is a work of memoir. Rebecca writes, ‘Even in 2018, it’s extraordinarily difficult to find Own Voice migrant and refugee narratives in published Australian literature for children and young adults. I believe the invisibility of intersectional and marginalised stories in western society has contributed to the devastating depletion of empathy in modern life and the entrenchment of systemic bias. My piece tries to articulate what it feels like to be without privilege, without language, in a new and contested country.’

  Border Crossings

  I’ve always imagined that when you’re born, you inhabit your own wordless island.

  You’re just a creature of pure sense and feeling, a participant, not a player; simply acted upon.

  Sure, almost 400 years ago poet John Donne might have said:

  No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine*

  But he could think this, and say this, because he was a connected white man with ties to the English clergy, the English parliament and King James I of England.

  I don’t think most intersectional people who live in the west — people who are routinely marginalised because they are affected by systemic injustices (such as racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia) multi-dimensionally — usually feel part of the main: those people, gate keepers or institutions that make up mainstream political, educational, cultural and sporting life.

  G
eorge Orwell’s pigs once declared that all animals are equal but some are more equal than others and I think that’s true of the Australian main as well; society will be tailored for you — it will be easier, more usable or more understandable for you — if you’re the ‘right’ gender or ethnicity, have the ‘right’ cultural or religious affiliations, or you are physically, physiologically or neurologically ‘normal’. But those who aren’t the ‘right’ ones, including those from whom this land was stolen, will struggle to see themselves in our Houses of Parliament, our sporting teams, our movies, TV, plays or books, our public structures and institutions. Certain overt and implicit privileges are the birthright of some in this nation who identify with its colonisers, but not all. Ironically, those comfortably within ‘the main’ don’t usually see or understand this. They might simply shrug and say: Well, it is what it is.

  Bear with me as I try to articulate what it feels like to be without privilege, without language, in a new country.

  I was born into an extended ethnic Chinese Singaporean family that spoke Hokkien and Mandarin on one side, and Teo Chew and Mandarin on the other. Both sides spoke Cantonese, as well as a passable amount of Malay, so I imagine that during my early days on, let’s call it, ‘The Island of Sensory Feelings’, those were the languages and cultures I was absorbing, the languages and cultures that were crossing the porous borders of my nation of one, before I could even speak.

  Then, as I absorbed all the sensory feelings, my island began to split into an archipelago of other islands. The island inhabited by my beloved paternal grandmother who worked three jobs in post war Singapore to feed her six children, for instance, who spoke to me in Hokkien and cooked me Hokkien delicacies; the island inhabited by my forbidding maternal grandparents who barely spoke to me at all, but did so, if moved to do it, in Teo Chew. When I could move off my island, I could step onto theirs and onto others linked to me by blood or friendship, culture or language or daily familiarity.