by Alice Pung
I felt sorry for Tully. Her parents didn’t let her catch the bus by herself, even though she was six months older than the rest of us. But some hidden part of me also did not like her very much. I didn’t know what to say to her on the days when we finished school late and I walked her to the train station. Afterward, I would tramp over to my bus stop; by the time I got home, the housework and sewing work would have piled up and my mother would be angry.
Before I’d left that morning for the exam, I had gone into the garage. Mum was sitting there at her table, beneath a fluorescent bulb that glowed like an illuminated mushroom. The dust motes rained down on her head like furry spores. “Two hundred before Wednesday,” she told me, slowly turning over a collar-shaped piece of iron-on interfacing in her hands like a manuscript. This was a woman who had never picked up a book in her life; the only literature she looked at was the BI-LO and Safeway ads that arrived in our mailbox every Tuesday. Yet her fingertips could read that piece of polyester fiber like a blind person read braille.
For some reason, the picture in the exam paper had reminded me of my mother, so I’d written about her. If the other girls had asked, I would have told them. But somehow I did not want to share this with Tully.
“What took you so long?”
My mother was in the kitchen, putting some water on the stove to boil and opening up a packet of ramen, when I arrived home. She lived off those dehydrated noodles, a pack every afternoon.
“I had to wait for the bus and then catch a train.”
She wanted to know if the sixty dollars we’d paid for me to take the scholarship exam would be refunded if I didn’t get in.
“No, Mum. Where’s the Lamb?” I asked.
“Lamb’s in his box. Eat first.”
I watched her open the sachet of desiccated onions and MSG and pour it into the cooking noodles, then plonk a fried egg on top. My Chinese mother had a profile that I imagined photographers in National Geographic would consider noble: born in Hanoi, she had somehow ended up with darker skin and the bone structure of a Montagnard woman, those highland dwellers with strong jaws and long eyes.
We always called my baby brother the Lamb because of our surname, Lam. His real name was Aidan, because Mum wanted a word that our grandmother in Hanoi could pronounce, even though he had never met her. Mum kept saying she wanted to go back, but in thirteen years she had been there only once, and that was to bury Grandpa. “Life gets in the way,” she sighed whenever I asked, and then she would stare into the distance like a blind person remembering sight. Because I was so young when we left, I don’t remember much about my grandmother except that she smelled like aniseed rings and incense.
The Lamb slept in my parents’ bedroom but during the day spent most of his time in the garage with Mum. There were babies with faces like apples and bodies like small blimps, and then there was the Lamb, who looked more like a dried tamarind. Brown and skinny, he even sat in an enormous fruit box, waiting to be picked up. The Lamb was never the sort of baby who’d make it into a Target catalog—he’d more likely be the poster child for Compassion Australia—but he was a healthy and cheerful little pup. His box had cushions and toys, and it was very cozy. We didn’t have air-conditioning in our house, but we had a unit in the garage because that was where Mum spent most of the day, and sometimes a big part of the evening too. Sometimes my father helped out, because along with a sewing machine, there was a secondhand overlocker for denim and polar fleece.
“Hello there, Lamby.”
Looking at the piles of orange tracksuit pants, I wondered who would ever buy such ugly attire. Then I looked down at the Lamb: with the leftover fabric remnants, Mum had sewn him an orange polar-fleece tracksuit, complete with hood. He looked like a miniature pimp in the making.
“Lamby, we’re going to have some noodles now.”
The Lamb looked up with his round, unblinking eyes. He bunched his hand into a small fist with one finger sticking out, and as I leaned down to pick him up, he stuck that finger in my eye.
“Owww!”
The Lamb was beginning to explore the world through his hands. For months it had been his mouth. He put everything he found in it to test it out, including the plastic backs of Fruit Roll-Ups and a powdery dead moth, whose reemergence caused my mother grave alarm.
As I washed my eye out at the sink, the Lamb crawled into the kitchen and rubbed his own eye. Lately he had learned to stand. He was standing now, with one hand splayed on the wall for balance, the index finger of his other hand pointing straight up toward the ceiling and the other fingers balled into a little fist, as if he was having a eureka moment.
“Come here, Lambface.” I hoisted him onto my lap.
“He’s been in the garage all day,” Mum told me. “After you finish your noodles, take him outside for a walk. But don’t be too long, because I need you to help me iron a box of shirtsleeves.”
The largest box from each new shipment Uncle Sokkha brought over became the Lamb’s new playpen, which was just as well because by then he would have decorated the last one with scribbles. Mum only thought to buy him a packet of washable markers when one day he made his open-ended circles with a red permanent pen across a pair of beige shorts she had just sewn.
Uncle Sokkha wasn’t our real uncle. He had a mustache and a Cambodian Afro—a Cambofro. I’d never seen one on an Asian man before. He liked patterned shirts and gold chains, and he looked like he should be selling Sunkist soft drinks on television, except for three things:
1. He didn’t speak English.
2. He had a scar running from the left corner of his mouth to the edge of his nose, which puckered his lip up a bit at the end so that it looked as if he was constantly snarling at some sick joke.
3. He didn’t have the sort of chilled personality required of a soft-drink promoter.
Besides his creepy lip curl, which I didn’t think he could help, I’d never seen him smile. Whenever he delivered a new batch of clothes to my mother, he always stressed that it was urgent, like a mob boss directing a hit man. Then he’d drive away in his white van, only to reappear two weeks later with a new batch.
I carried the Lamb outside on my hip and took him to have a look at the Donaldsons’ front yard. He pointed to one of the gnomes hiding behind the gerberas and squealed with delight. He also scrambled around in my arms, trying to get down, but I held on tight. I didn’t want him trespassing in the neighbors’ garden. As friendly as the Donaldsons were, in our neighborhood we all knew our place.
When the letter arrived in the mail a few Fridays later, my first thought was just to throw it in the bin and not tell my father. After all, the envelope felt so thin. But then I thought, what the hell, I’ll have a look to see what polite rejection they’ve come up with, and then call and congratulate Tully. I ripped one end open so carelessly that I ended up tearing off part of the letter.
Dear Lucy,
As we approach a new century, we must equip our students to become leaders in myriad far-reaching social, economic and cultural fields. Laurinda is proud to introduce and embrace experiences of diversity in our strong tradition.
It is with great pleasure that I write to inform you that you have been awarded the inaugural Laurinda Equal Access scholarship.
It was signed by an E. Grey, Head of High School, with instructions to call the school to arrange for an interview. I think I must have made a noise that sounded like eeeek, eeeek, eeeek! because Mum came rushing into the house, thinking the smoke alarm had gone off. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked.
I told her.
In an American family sitcom, Linh, this would be the moment when the mother and daughter jump and hug each other and shed some tears. The mother would tell the daughter how proud she was, and then they would joyfully get in the car and go shopping.
“That’s good,” said Mum. “We don’t need to get the refund.”
“It was never a refundable deposit, Mum.”
In the same sitcom, the mother a
nd daughter would probably sit down over a cup of brewed coffee (and perhaps some cupcakes) to talk about the future. Half a year ago, my mum had bought a can of Nescafé on sale. For her, happiness was hoarding seventeen cans of sweetened condensed milk in the cupboard. We drank our coffee in silence.
“You’d better call your dad,” she said finally.
So I did. By the time he came home that evening, he had told his workmates and his friends, and they had passed on the news to their wives and children.
“Lucy Lam!” they were probably exclaiming. “Who would have thought?”
A day later, everyone knew.
As people started calling to congratulate me, at first I felt pride and anxiety in equal measure. They were pleased for me, but not even old Mrs. Giap hid her surprise. That weekend she was coming for a toenail trimming—and even if I was the scholarship winner, my mother would not let me off this task.
“Keep still, Grandma Giap,” I told her as I wedged her brown foot between my knees. It reminded me of a mummy’s foot, all brown and dry and crumpled in strange places. When I clipped her toenails, I had to close my eyes and mouth because the pieces would fly hard and fast.
“Ah, my girl, you have done more schooling than I ever have in my seventy-eight years,” she sighed, and then told me that she had assumed Tully would get the scholarship. “She works harder than you. She’s probably smarter than you too.” Those Asian old folks had clearly never heard of the white lie. “But she didn’t deserve it.”
White lies be damned—sometimes I loved the truth.
I thought of Tully, and how her father had got her baptized just so she could get into a Catholic school. He’d called on Mrs. Giap to be her godmother, as if Mrs. Giap’s faith were a single-use instrument like a syringe. The difference between Tully and me wasn’t our smarts or our parents. The difference, I recognized, was that I was well liked and Tully wasn’t.
That didn’t alleviate the guilt I was feeling. I’d never thought I would get into Laurinda, and had even supposed that after Tully left Christ Our Savior, things would be less tense without her panic attacks and tears. The only reason Tully had missed out on getting into the state selective school was because she’d been down for a week before the exam with the flu. I had never imagined Tully being left behind.
—
The following Monday, the start of summer break, I called the number at the end of the letter.
“Laurinda Ladies’ College, Eunice Grey speaking.”
This was the first time I had spoken to someone from the school, and I was nervous. I introduced myself and she replied, “Ah, yes, Lucy, I was expecting your call.” Then there was a pause, as if she’d forgotten something she was supposed to say. For a moment I thought she’d got me mixed up with Tully. Then she remembered: “Congratulations.”
“Thanks.”
She told me that I needed to come in for an interview next week with my parents, and we’d also sort out a few administrative things.
“Okay.”
“Tuesday at eleven?”
“Okay.”
“I look forward to meeting you then.”
“Okay.” Then I added again, “Thank you.”
It was only after I hung up that I realized I had not thought to check with my father to see if he was working a shift then. Mrs. Grey had spoken so authoritatively that I presumed our meeting time was set. If my father couldn’t make it, I decided, I would go alone.
I was used to sorting out phone billing errors, insurance claims and doctors’ appointments for my parents. Sometimes, to avoid the hassle of explaining that I was acting on their behalf, I simply pretended to be my mother over the phone. She even let me forge her signature on forms. I’d never understood the brats on television who threw tantrums when their dads missed their soccer matches, as if the world of adults revolved around their games. If the Lamb grew up to be one of those boys who resented our father working on Saturdays and missing his school football finals, he’d get a slap on the bum from either Mum or me for his selfishness. That was the way things were with our family.
But Dad was taking this unexpected miracle of a scholarship so seriously that he got some time off work.
—
My father parked his Camry beside the only other car at the school, a silver BMW. The college was deserted, but the wooden front door of the main building opened when I pushed it. A stained-glass window depicting the college crest took up an entire wall. On the mahogany reception desk was a vase of heavy flowers, the likes of which I’d never seen in Stanley—they looked as if they’d been plucked from some heady Brazilian rain forest. Behind the desk was a framed oil painting of a woman staring myopically into the distance; she was wearing an academic gown and a hat that looked like a deflated jester’s cap.
“Where do we go?” my father asked. I had no idea. Perhaps we were meant to sit on the dark brown leather chairs and wait. Then we heard a door open somewhere down the corridor. There were footsteps, and a tall, broad woman stepped into the reception area. “You must be Lucy Lam.” She smiled at me as if she wasn’t used to smiling, her white eggshell face cracking, her features scrambling around. Then she turned to my dad. “And you must be Mr. Lam. Welcome to our school.”
Mrs. Grey had short hair dyed the color of rust and wore a wasabi-colored blouse. She towered over us, so I got a clear view of the sharp pyramid of her nasal cavity and also her mouth, with the maroon lipstick seeping through her tiny lip wrinkles. As she led us down a corridor of polished wooden doors, all closed, I felt like I was going to confession: against the wall outside each door was a wooden pew long enough to seat three girls.
The first thing I noticed on entering Mrs. Grey’s office was how empty it was. There was a small shelf of books against one corner of the room, a fireplace in the other, and an enormous, shiny desk in the middle that seemed to be made of a single slab of wood picked up off a forest floor, sandpapered and polished. Mrs. Grey sat down behind the desk, which was completely bare except for a silver penholder. My father and I each took one of the two brocade-upholstered chairs on the other side.
Mrs. Grey told my father that my results on the exam were very good, and that my essay was outstanding. “You must be tremendously proud of her.”
“You are too kind,” my father said, “but my daughter Lucy here, she really isn’t so smart. We never knew she had smarts in her. We didn’t even think to get her extra tutoring. That’s why we were so surprised that she won the scholarship. Ha!”
“At Laurinda, we are looking for well-rounded students,” explained Mrs. Grey. “And we frown upon coached students.”
My father looked confused, and I knew he was wondering why I had been chosen if they preferred untutored fat girls.
“At Laurinda, we pride ourselves on our diversity, hence this new Equal Access program,” Mrs. Grey continued. “We are looking for natural talent and leadership potential. A student who goes to cram school and rote-learns things to pass exams does not meet the criteria.”
I was beginning to feel pretty good about myself.
“We are very pleased that you will be joining our college, Lucy,” she told me. “In your letter with your application, you mentioned that you were very involved in voluntary activities, and that your hobbies include fashion design?”
I did not tell her that this was because Mum sometimes sent me to church on the Sundays when she couldn’t make it, and that she made me do kitchen duty and visit the older ladies in the neighborhood who didn’t have grandchildren who could help them translate their mail. Or that by fashion design I meant helping Mum translate the designs of Coast & Co. fashions into tangibles that could be made for below minimum wage.
“You also mentioned,” Mrs. Grey continued, “that you were a representative on your student council last year.”
I looked down at my hands.
“Here we don’t have a student representative body, as we feel there is no need for one. The girls are engaged in all types of enrich
ing activities—debating, music, theater, musical theater, sports. We do hope that you will be able to partake in many of these activities while you are here.”
I nodded, hoping to indicate that I would be an upstanding Laurinda citizen.
She told us about the history of the school, how it was one of the oldest ladies’ colleges in the state, and how it was a Christian institution, so we would have to go to church once every term.
Once every term! Back at Christ Our Savior, church was once a week. Here the girls focused on Latin and art history. I had come too late to learn the latter, Mrs. Grey told me, but it was something I might have liked.
She handed me a navy blue book and matching folder. “This is the student handbook, and in it you will find all you need to know about Laurinda,” she announced, as if the school itself were a great lady I was supposed to study up on. “And in this folder is our uniform list. Note that we have only one supplier, Edmondsons.”
She put both hands on her desk and stood. “Now I will show you around.” I noticed that her nails were painted the same color as her lips.
“The rendering is very beautiful,” my father commented as we stood in front of the main building. “My Italian nephew Claude is a renderer on the Gold Coast.”
Dad was taking the “displaying diversity” part too far, I thought.
“It’s actually sandstone,” explained Mrs. Grey. “Sydney Basin Hawkesbury sandstone. Very few buildings in Melbourne around the turn of the century were built with this material, which was imported from New South Wales.”
It was only much later that I realized sandstone was not the same as a rendered façade—back then I was just as lost as my father, and we stood there willingly being edified by a being who knew so much more than we did.
“We have three campuses at Laurinda,” Mrs. Grey told us as she led us away from the main building. “The junior school is down the road. This is the middle school campus, for Years Seven to Ten. Next year, when Lucy is in senior school, she will go to the campus on Arcadia Avenue.”