by Alice Pung
“This is impossible!” sighed Brodie, perhaps because I did not seem to her to be feeling enough guilt. “I’m sorry we even tried, Lucy.” Even her sighs were exaggerated gestures stolen straight from American TV.
Suddenly there was a splashing sound from our kitchen, then an enormous thump that shook the floor of our house.
“What was that?”
“Mum just killed a fish.”
“What the—”
“That’s what we’re having for dinner. She makes tasty fish with ginger and coriander. Come and see, if you like. She’ll be gutting it now.”
Brodie gave me a look, as if I was deliberately trying to disgust her—which, admittedly, I was. Yesterday, Mum and Dad had driven to the Sunray market, and they’d returned with a bucket containing the thrashing fish.
“Well, I’d better not interrupt your dinner, then.” Brodie stood up.
“How are you going to get home?”
“I’ll call a taxi.”
“Let me get our phone for you.”
“No, it’s all right.” And from the front of her schoolbag she pulled out her phone. The only people in Stanley I had seen with that brand were businessmen and builders.
My father arrived home and saw Brodie standing in the corner of our living room. After she hung up, she smiled at him and apologized for being on the phone.
“Lucy,” Dad scolded, “why did you let your friend waste money calling from her father’s phone? She could have used ours.”
“That’s all right, Mr. Lam,” she said. “It was a short call. I was just booking a taxi.”
“A taxi? Don’t be ridiculous—we’ll take you home.”
My father was the one being ridiculous, I thought. He didn’t even know where she lived.
“Lucy, how could you let your friend catch a taxi?” my father said accusingly, as if I had stolen the umbrella of a frail old lady on a day pummeling with hail.
“No, really, it’s all right, Mr. Lam. You’re having dinner soon. I don’t want to disturb your family.”
“Nonsense. Join us for dinner! Lucy, lay down the newspapers.”
I prayed that Brodie would leave before she had time to realize our environmentally friendly choice of dining ware.
“No, really, Mr. Lam, that is very kind of you, but my parents expect me home for dinner.” She probably thought we were going to eat her and that the newspapers were to line the floor to clean up the evidence.
After her taxi left, my father turned to me. “Wah!” he exclaimed. “Extraordinary! That friend of yours takes taxis by herself.”
My encounter with Brodie showed me that there was something obscene about this school’s idea that doing good somehow had to feel good too. I thought about the Laurindans and their charity events where they gained makeovers or lipsticks, and their afternoon teas with guest speakers who were missing arms or legs or who were of a color rare in these quarters. These events fostered a feeling of goodwill they could control, but Brodie had served herself a slice of our life and felt it too gritty to digest.
Meanwhile, in politics we were studying the maiden speech of a politician who’d announced that Australia was in danger of being “swamped” by Asians. “They have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and don’t assimilate,” she had declared, and I heard an echo of what was happening to me at Laurinda. I was regressing back to my ghetto of one and not assimilating, even though the Cabinet had extended such a gracious hand to me.
And Mr. Sinclair. Over the course of the year, Mr. Sinclair had changed. No longer did he wear his smart suit jackets. He came to school in a shirt and navy trousers, sometimes even an ugly green cardigan with wooden buttons. He was dressing like an old man. And he was teaching straight out of books. Introduction to the Three Levels of Government. The Federal Judicial System. The Small Claims Tribunal.
Admittedly, now that he was giving us the nuts and bolts, I was learning more about our political system. No longer could the Cabinet monopolize the class. But I was also saddened, because now Mr. Sinclair was teaching as if he were driving a car along a very narrow road, getting to the destination as quickly as possible. No more taking the scenic route.
—
One afternoon at school, Amber found me. “I need to talk to you, Lucy,” she said.
“What about?”
“I need to talk to you in private.”
“No, you can say it in front of other people.” I crossed my arms in front of my chest. I was having none of this, and I knew the other girls were interested in what was happening. They were always interested when the Cabinet cornered someone.
“Please,” pleaded Amber.
We walked toward the back of the bathroom.
“Lucy, I know Brodie came to your house to ask you not to do something.”
I stayed silent.
“The truth is, Brodie’s in a bit of trouble with Mrs. Grey.”
Ooh, it was “Mrs. Grey” now, I thought. This was interesting news.
“It has to do with her chapel speech, and then Nadia Pinto. Mrs. Grey believes Brodie has crossed some sort of line.”
Brodie has always crossed lines, I thought bitterly. The only difference this time was that while the line was being sprayed, the paint had streaked across the pointy tips of Mrs. Grey’s plum leather pumps. And for the first time, Mrs. Grey was worried.
“That’s why Brodie came over to your house, Lucy. I told her it was a bad idea and that you were a very private person. But you know Brodie. She does what she wants. I know she came to shut you up, Lucy,” she told me, “and I know you don’t like her. And if you don’t shut up, it makes her look bad.”
“Look bad?” I asked in mock innocence.
“It will look like she orchestrated the whole thing to rub it in that the school has no control over anything that happens in the classrooms, bathrooms or…how the school is represented to others.” Amber was trying to sound artless, but I knew she was choosing her words very carefully.
“I’m sorry, Amber. I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”
“Brodie was the one who put your name forward for the Equity in Education conference,” she confessed.
“Why would she do that?”
Brodie never gave anyone else an opportunity unless there was some direct benefit to the Cabinet. After her chapel talk, she had the students eating out of her hand, but that was precisely the problem: the administration could see that the Cabinet was now growing far too influential. Although Mrs. Grey was probably relieved that the unstable Ms. Vanderwerp was gone, Brodie’s talk had been a direct demonstration of the Cabinet’s power—and Brodie had relished it a little too much for Mrs. Grey’s liking.
The triangle—the most stable of geometric shapes, with its wide support base and pointed tip—now needed one last element: the Cabinet needed to be seen as the good girls they thought they were. They wanted to show that not only were they mentoring the less fortunate girls here, but they were also concerned about sustaining the school’s public image. At Christ Our Savior, you helped maintain the school’s reputation by offering your seat on the bus to the elderly. Here at Laurinda, things were infinitely more complicated.
Amber took a deep breath and then blurted out, “I don’t think you should listen to what Brodie says anyway.”
I looked at Amber. Beautiful, cowardly Amber. It had taken all her courage to say that to me. But this was not the real revelation. The real revelation was that Brodie had believed I was malleable enough to do her bidding—and that she thought my appearance at the university conference would change Mrs. Grey’s belief that the Cabinet was becoming a threat to the school’s unity.
“Amber,” I said, “do you really think I would get up in front of the academics and professors and principals of high schools and read a speech about how fifteen-year-old girls torment teachers with tampons and break little girls’ hands? What kind of idiot do you think I am? I’m on a scholarship here.”
“Lucy, I know you
wouldn’t do that,” Amber said, although I knew this was news to her. “But if you’d like, my mum could help you. I know you’ve never done this sort of thing before.”
“Do you expect me to thank you?”
“Pardon?”
“To thank you, Amber,” I repeated like a speech pathologist. “Should I be thanking you for telling me to be myself?”
“What?”
“Would you like me to bow, like Harshan did?”
Her eyes became unfriendly. “Don’t forget what my mum’s done for you, Lucy Lam.”
“What does that mean, Amber Leslie?”
“It means be careful what you say.”
“You wanted me to hang around with you because I make you look better,” I blurted out. This had never occurred to me before because it was a colossally immodest idea, but the moment I said it, I knew it was true.
Amber laughed. No one had ever said anything like that to a Cabinet member before.
“I make you guys look like you’re not vicious. I make you look charitable. I’m like your pet, and you want me to be forever grateful for whatever scraps you throw my way.” Well, Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever and rich, I was thinking, I’m not going to be your Harriet Smith anymore. “It’s the truth,” I told her, and walked away.
—
Still the Cabinet would not leave me alone.
Since Brodie’s visit to my home, my life had suddenly become very interesting to them. It was as if an innocuous and uninteresting girl suddenly turned out to be an orphan, or to have cancer, or to have a secret life as an underage escort. For others, there was the vicarious thrill of being associated with her, but also the need to be careful, to make sure they didn’t get too close, lest her sadness or sickness or depression rub off on them.
“What exactly does your mum do?” Brodie asked me the next day when I was pulling my bag out of my locker, getting ready to go home. The rest of the Cabinet was with her. I had stayed behind to photocopy a couple of pages out of the yearbook without anyone seeing. I quickly shoved the pages into my bag.
“You were at my house—you could have asked her yourself.”
“She doesn’t speak English.”
“Why does it matter what my mother does, Brodie? That’s a personal question. What if I asked you what your mum does?” I retorted.
“She’s a professor of management at Monash University. If you asked, I’d tell you,” she explained reasonably. “That’s what friends do. They talk openly about things like this because it’s no big deal. Unless, of course, it is for you.”
That was unfair. None of the trio had been remotely interested in what my parents did until now.
“Mum works.”
“Yes, but doing what exactly?”
“She sews.”
“Well, why wasn’t she at work when I came over?”
“She works from home.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.”
“Amber told us that yesterday you were being evasive with her. We just want to make sure we don’t end up associating with shady people.”
“What does that mean?”
“You should know.”
Rage was building up in me. And suddenly I felt as if you, Linh, were standing behind me, pushing me to be who I was before.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about. Who was that pimp guy I saw outside your house?”
She knew how to get to me. It was the most insidious, vilest thing anyone had said about my family. I hated these slutty virgins who knew how to aim prurience like a poisoned arrow, directly where it hurt most.
My hands were shaking. I wanted to spit in her face, pull her hair. I wanted to slap her senseless.
Instead, I replied, “He’s the heroin dealer, you moron. He was giving my mother money for the shit. His name is Sokkha, and if you insult my mum again he’ll kick you so far that by the time you stop rolling, your clothes will be out of fashion.”
I didn’t need to punch her in the face. This girl, who calculated the effect of every word she uttered, finally understood that there was nothing random about either my speech or my silence.
“I wasn’t saying anything!” Brodie protested. “I was just asking what your mum did.”
“But you think I’m dodgy.”
To reply in the most barbed way she could, Brodie said nothing.
I doubted that the Cabinet really believed we dealt drugs, but now they were looking at me as if I were rabid. I walked out of the locker room and toward the oval, to the back entrance of the school, where my bus stop was. I could feel them creeping up from behind like a cheap and ill-fitting pair of underwear.
“How dare you!” railed Chelsea. “How dare you!”
I turned around. “You think I’m feral, but you broke a girl’s hand!” I said. At least three dozen students were milling near the back gate of the school, waiting for their buses, but I didn’t care. “You bullied a teacher out of the school! You do evil things and get away with it because you think you’re untouchable!”
“No student can bully a teacher, Lucy,” Brodie explained gently, as if I were a child. “She wasn’t doing her job. She couldn’t teach. If she could, none of that would have happened.”
“She was nice!” I retorted—but I might as well have said, “She wears organic cotton socks!” or “She was clean!” for all the relevance it had.
“You’re such a suck-up.”
Then, as I neared the fence, I thought I was imagining things. But there you were, Linh, standing among the kilts and blazers of glory. Soon we were standing on the same side. I could barely believe it. I had not seen you for so long, but there you were: an ally in the face of adversity! My heart rose. I did not have to battle these bitches by myself. There was no time for introductions.
We turned to face the Cabinet.
These girls knew that bad words were only truly bad if saved for special occasions. If you used them often, they lost their power and became like any other word that expressed annoyance or surprise, the two expressions that now pinched Brodie’s face—although, in her carefully controlled decorum, only her mouth twitched at the corners. Girls like her were always going to judge girls like you, and judge anything you said not by its content but by your Stanley accent—so you gave it to them, as loudly as you could.
“Fuck youse!”
Heads turned. Girls’ jaws dropped. A few parents who were walking toward the gate looked on in horror. The after-school teacher, the poor soul vested with the task of delivering these girls safely to their buses, was Mr. Sinclair, and he was striding toward us.
“Excuse me?” Brodie sounded like an English teacher, and for a moment I thought that her shock was at your bad grammar.
“Youse are all sick. The whole fucking lot of youse.”
Mr. Sinclair was now standing directly in front of us. “Young lady, we do not tolerate that kind of language here at this school!”
“I don’t give a shit,” you told him. “I’m not part of this school.”
I did not go to school the next day.
I woke up and decided I didn’t even want to get out of bed. My peripheral vision had shrunk, like the picture on our old television. When you switched off the black-and-white box, the image grew darker around the edges, and was then sucked into a little black hole at the center. I spent some time examining my own hands and fingernails, intrigued that such things belonged to me. Pink and brown and many-pronged, they looked like creatures of the sea, like tentacles without a head or body attached.
“What’s wrong?” Mum asked when she realized I wasn’t in the kitchen making myself a sandwich to take for lunch. “Are you sick?”
I didn’t have a fever, I didn’t have a headache, but my hands felt like they had turned to anemones, my feet to coral.
All year I had tried to keep a low profile, to just get on with things, and you’d ruined it in a few minutes. But you know what? I didn’t care. I
didn’t care, because that day was the last time I would ever see you. I hadn’t realized it then, in the excitement of the moment, but now it was sinking in.
I wish I could have told you how much talking and writing to you meant to me all year. How you were my bullshit detector. How you listened and kept me true, even when I wanted to block my ears, because you had no filter between your thoughts and your mouth. How you were my best friend, and how it was only because of you that I never felt isolated or desperate to attach myself to anyone at Laurinda. But after our moment of triumph, you fled without even looking back, and I knew that even if I chased after you I would never catch up.
You were gone.
What had happened in the span of less than a year? I had gone from being the girl most likely to succeed, the well-liked all-rounder, the one who was smart but helpful and not crazy-competitive like Tully, the one who would make the factory workers of Stanley proud, the one with conviction, to the girl least likely to achieve, the one who would never join any club ever again, who withdrew into herself, who got herself kicked out of remedial English.
“Look at you beautiful girls,” Sister Clarke used to say to us before every parent-teacher interview at Christ Our Savior. “Look at you all. So strong and full of life, despite the suffering your folks went through. Look at how smart you are, look at how creative you are, look at how kind you are. You are going to make your parents so proud.” And then she would ask us to come along in the evening so we could translate for our parents.
Mr. Galloway had once said, half jokingly, to another teacher, “Watch this one! She’s going to be prime minister one day,” and I had believed him—not that I wanted to become prime minister, but he gave me the faith that if I harbored such a dream and worked hard enough, it would come true. I had believed that hard work would make anything a certainty.
Now I wasn’t so sure.
I knew that the kind of life my father dreamed for me was small, so small, in comparison to the life of culture and art and politics and power that the Cabinet had ahead of them. There was a reason Stephanie Phoung had ended up working as an accountant above her parents’ jewelry store in Sunray. It had probably started when she’d arrived at her new school and quickly learned to keep her head down and do her work, and to block out everything else.