by Alice Pung
“Take my new job,” she said. “When I started, I was scared to death of the machines, and it smelled so bad. My fingers weren’t used to the cold. I thought the foreman would surely fire me after the third day. But I plodded on.”
“Yes, Mum, but you’ve never been around people like this. They’re watching me, waiting for me to mess up. All the time.”
My mother sighed. “Why can’t you just ignore it? Ignore it and keep your head down and work hard, like Tully did.”
“I’m not Tully!” I shouted. “I’ll never be Tully.”
“But you’ll also never be like that tall girl from your new school,” Mum said. “The one who came over. I know this has something to do with her.”
My mother, she didn’t miss a thing.
“Keep your head down and soon she’ll stop bothering you,” she said.
“But, Mum,” I protested. I had no idea how to make my mother, who’d spent the better part of a decade in the dark of the garage, understand this school, let alone how the Cabinet imposed their will. “You’ve never been around groups of people like this.”
“You were too young to remember,” she told me, “but one day when we were on the boat—I think it was the fourth day—some Thai pirates came. At first we thought they were fishermen, but then we saw the knives in their hands. Suddenly they were on our boat, yelling and waving those knives around. We couldn’t understand them but we knew enough to get down on the deck and press our stomachs to the floor while they searched for any gold we might have.
“It seemed like the time went on forever. I had you flattened next to me, and prayed that you would not start crying. During that endless wait, even when there was silence, no one wanted to be the curious one. There was only one person killed that day, and he was the first to raise his head. After that, the pirates left without looking back.”
My mother’s point was this: be vigilant and be silent. It was almost our family motto. That was how we inched ahead, unthreatening and undetected. I had to go back to school, and Mum was saying that this was how I would get through the final term. I should lie low and let the perils pass over me. After all, if the school could forget Ms. Vanderwerp so easily, then I could make myself invisible too, so that people would likewise forget my terrible last day of Term Three. Probably no one would even notice my return, I thought, because the Cabinet would have been doing their best to efface me.
I had no choice but to drag myself forward, softly plowing through time, moment by moment, until I pulled through to the other side of Year Ten.
With my backpack on, I shuffled through the school gates, hoping to blend in with the other girls. But for the second time that year, my uniform gave me away. Everyone else had remembered to wear the summer uniform of blue short-sleeved shirt and pleated light gray cotton skirt. I felt heavier than ever, inside and out, like a soldier from another battalion fighting a war I could never win.
Gina cornered me at my locker. “Lucy, how come you’re in your winter uniform?”
“I’m cold,” I replied tersely, my flushed cheeks revealing my lie.
“You know you’re not allowed to wear that. You need to get a uniform pass.”
Since when had Gina become a prefect? I opened my combination lock and began to unload my books.
“Don’t ignore me,” she threatened as I shoved my bag in. “Just because you got suspended last term doesn’t mean you can avoid the Growler, you know.”
“What?”
“Oh, yeah, act surprised.”
“I wasn’t suspended!”
“Huh!” scoffed Gina. “While Katie was waiting for her grandma to pick her up, she saw you going crazy at the Cabinet. And the scholarship girl does not miss the last three days of term for no reason. You’ve never been away all year. We all know about it.”
Maybe Mr. Sinclair had had a word with other staff members about my outburst. That seemed unlikely, I thought, because Mr. Sinclair didn’t believe in punishment by committee. We had talked about Socrates at the social. Anyhow, if the school had suspended me, wouldn’t they have sent a letter? Then it sank in: my absence had given the Cabinet the perfect opportunity to spread a rumor that Mrs. Grey had suspended me for misconduct.
“Sinclair was on after-school duty, wasn’t he?” asked Gina.
“Yes.”
“Katie said that after you left, he told off Amber, Brodie and Chelsea.”
“What? Why would he tell them off?”
“I don’t know,” confessed Gina. “But what did you do?”
I stared at Gina so long and hard that she looked away.
Then she remembered another thing: “And, while you were away, they decided to swap you for that Year Eight girl Nadia. You know, for the Equity in Education conference.” And then she left, swinging her summer skirt like a fan.
I’d vowed not to let myself get agitated, and yet already I was shaken. Even though I had not wanted to give the stupid talk, I felt robbed. They’d decided to replace me with thirteen-year-old Nadia Pinto? This was what they meant by diversity, just because she was brown? She was a sweet girl, but she could barely string a couple of sentences together.
Mrs. Grey called me to her office at recess. She glared at my uniform and told me off, but that was not the real reason she wanted to see me.
“You missed the crucial last week of term,” she told me. “We gave your privilege to speak on behalf of the school to Nadia.”
“I understand, Mrs. Grey. I’m sorry.” I’d only missed three days!
“No, I don’t think you fully understand these privileges. All year, Miss Lam, we have been waiting to see what you would offer the school. You came to us full of potential.” She shook her head slowly and sadly, and closed her eyes. “Even after the girls kindly took you under their wing, you refused to participate.” She opened her eyes again and lasered them onto me. “What’s more, your behavior on your last day of Term Three was entirely unacceptable. I may need to have a serious talk with your parents, to renegotiate the terms of your being at this school.” She sighed wearily. “We may even have to rescind our offer if this is not working out for you.”
This news hit me like an unexpected blow, and it was all I could do to swallow the rising lump in my throat, to stop my eyes from welling with tears. I sat on my hands to stop their trembling. I did not know how to reply. I had spent so long lately thinking of a way to leave Laurinda, and now here it was, offered to me—yet somehow I felt even worse.
I left Mrs. Grey’s office in a state of shock. I suppose, from the school’s perspective, I had brought this all upon myself, by refusing to throw myself into the rich social and cultural life of the college while never explaining what was happening at home. Yet I could never tell Laurinda the truth of what had happened during that term break. It was bad enough that Brodie had visited—I definitely hadn’t wanted the rest of the itchy-fingered, judgmental young ladies coming over to pinch the Lamb’s cheeks. I did not want the school to send us a bouquet, because they would have got it all wrong. They’d probably have sent a classy white one, which would have scared the hell out of my mother because it would have reminded her of death.
—
Walking down the corridor, I saw through the window that the Cabinet was sitting on their bench again. They had always been a trio; my being around them had not really expanded them into a quartet. And now I understood why Gina had been so blunt with me. She was my replacement, but she was sitting on the grass like a loyal subject, gazing up at the seated Trinity. Through the glass, I watched Gina fling her head back and laugh at something. Her hair, I noticed, was back to its natural brown and tied in a ponytail.
There was still fifteen minutes of recess left, and I decided to spend them in the library. I retreated into the back corner and pulled out a book about Rodin. Staring blankly at the photos of marbled lovers and stone-cold thinkers, I worried about what my father would say.
Someone tapped me on my shoulder and I almost dropped the book.
“Okay,” I replied cautiously. I assumed she wanted something, maybe some tidbit of gossip from my meeting with Mrs. Grey.
But all she said was “It’s good to see you back.”
“Thanks.”
“Yeah, great to see you back, Lucy,” added Stella, coming up to join us. “We missed you.”
I began to worry. These were the kinder girls in the class, and I suspected that the Cabinet might have put them up to this. “Make sure you keep an eye on poor Lucy,” they would have told everyone. “She’s not feeling herself. And these are her last days.”
But then Katie appeared from behind the two girls and vehemently told me, “Lucy, you really put them in their place, those bitches!” Two patches of pink appeared on her cheeks.
This was a Katie I had never seen before. I didn’t even know she could swear.
“I went off at Brodie because I was mentally ill,” I replied flatly, still in shock.
“You’re funny, Lucy,” she said. “I never realized how funny you are.”
“No, it’s the truth.”
Seeing the expression on my face, they had the decency to leave me alone.
—
In Mr. Sinclair’s class there was now open hostility from the Cabinet. One of them had brought in a magazine, supposedly to moon over Mercury Stool, but just as Mr. Sinclair entered the classroom, Chelsea nudged Gina and exclaimed, “Oh my God, look at the singer. Gingers are so not hot. Gross.” It was juvenile, just like the chocolate heart incident, but again there was no way Mr. Sinclair could turn to these girls and say, “I’m a thirty-two-year-old man, I don’t care what you kids think of me,” without sounding like he actually did care. He ignored the taunt.
I felt awkward being in his class, and ashamed. I did not want him to single me out that first day back, and he didn’t. He didn’t pay any particular attention to me. He was just teaching, business as usual.
When the class ended I went up to his desk. “Can I talk to you, Mr. Sinclair?”
Mr. Sinclair was now very careful, and made sure the door remained open.
“I just wanted to apologize,” I said. “About my language last term at the bus stop. And going crazy at those girls. And, yeah, doing it in front of all the parents and younger students.”
“That was some very colorful language you had going on there that day, Lucy.”
“I’m also sorry for swearing at you in particular.”
Then Mr. Sinclair did something surprising and annoying: he started to laugh. I had been repentant and sincere, and he found it hilarious! So funny that no one nearby could have mistaken his deep, crazy laugh for flirtation of any sort.
But maybe he was scared that I would cry in front of him, so he started to apologize. “Lucy, I’m sorry for laughing at you. I went to a Catholic boys’ school—no foul language could shock me. What you did reminded me of when I was a student at St. Martin de Porres. Whenever the boys had a problem with each other, they would wait outside the back gate until the last of the teachers had cleared off. We would gather our friends in two different groups—one for each boy. Then we’d have it out with each other. We’d fight. There would be a winner and a loser. And then the next week, whatever we’d been fighting about, whatever grudge we’d had, would generally be forgotten. There was respect for the winner. That was how we laid our issues to rest. Girls, on the other hand…”
I knew he was thinking of a way to tell me what I already knew. “Well, you know when you swore at Brodie and her friends?”
“Yes.” He was going to say that I’d fought dirty, that I’d been feral and unfair and cowardly, I thought, and braced myself.
“Well, why didn’t they yell back at you?” he asked.
“Maybe they were more decent,” I said.
“Lucy, do you really believe that? That they are more decent than you?”
How could I answer that? Of course not. But that would make me sound self-righteous and prim—exactly like them. That was the reason they had refrained from yelling back. It was beneath their dignity, it would have made them look as bad as me. It would have been distasteful.
“I don’t know, sir. Maybe I care less about decency than they do.”
Mr. Sinclair laughed again. “You are a real character, Lucy Lam. I salute you. You don’t talk very much, but when you do, you always tell the truth. You know, before Martha—Ms. Vanderwerp—left, she told me to keep a close eye on you. She said you were one to watch because you were full of promise.”
“Thanks, Mr. Sinclair. Actually, I saw her recently.”
“Did you?”
“At the supermarket. I didn’t know she lived in Sunray.”
“Ah, her father did. She’s had a lot on this year, Ms. Vanderwerp.”
“Mr. Sinclair, I am very sorry about my role in what happened—”
“Lucy,” he said, “I couldn’t have found a sorrier student. I needed to instill a sense of shame in some of the girls that day, but I did not want to single them out. I had to involve the whole class, even though some of you didn’t deserve it. I apologize for that.”
I was not angry at him. He was a teacher, and he’d done what any decent teacher would do. I did not understand anything about his life. I didn’t know whether he was well liked in the staff room, or whether he was being made into a scapegoat like Ms. Vanderwerp. I didn’t know whether the other teachers took him seriously, or whether they mocked his Socratic classroom. I didn’t know what he talked about when he went home to his family. But my encounter with Ms. Vanderwerp had shown me that not all teachers lived in blissful ignorance like Mrs. Leslie.
In a single morning, I had swung from dread, to anger, to despair, and just when depression was about to engulf me, I had been handed this small but rock-hard nugget of hope. Both Mr. Sinclair and Ms. Vanderwerp had seen something in me. Full of promise, they had said. Was that true? And if it was, was this a reason for me to stay at Laurinda?
—
When the bell rang for lunch, Katie followed me down the corridor. “Are you going to the library again?” she asked.
“I suppose.”
“You can’t lie this time, Lucy Lam. You don’t have any homework to finish. It’s the start of term.”
“I like it there.”
“You like being alone?”
I nodded.
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“So…the Cabinet didn’t push you out?”
“No.” So that was what they were telling people.
“Then why did you go off at them last term?”
“You know why,” I told Katie. “They’re sick girls.” I turned away, about to go through the glass doors of the library.
“Hang on,” she said. “I know Mrs. Grey is thinking of kicking you out next year.”
“How did you know that?”
“Lucy, haven’t you worked it out already? Nothing is secret at this school. Mrs. Grey’s office window opens onto the corridor, and when she calls students in during recess and lunchtime, the whole school watches and listens.”
“Well, what happens to me is none of your business, Katie.” I was sorry the moment I blurted this out. I liked Katie, but sometimes guilt can make you a little cruel, and I still felt guilty about abandoning her at the start of the year. But also, she had reminded me that the whole school was a crowd of eyes and ears, and the self-righteous passivity of all those rumormongers and scuttlebutts irked me.
“But it is my business,” she told me, “if you choose to spend the rest of your time at this school hiding in the library, letting everyone else think that you’ve done something wrong. Your silence gives others the impression that you’re ashamed of yelling at the Cabinet. Lucy, even if you’re the strongest girl with the most independent mind, the sort of girl who doesn’t
mind being alone, the sort of person who would rather be by herself than with the most powerful clique in the school, no one else sees it that way.”
“I couldn’t care less how I am seen.”
“Of course you don’t,” said Katie. “No one who cares about her social position would leave the Cabinet. Don’t you get it, Lucy? No one understands where you’re coming from. You’re not seen. That’s why it’s been so easy for them to spread this story about how you’ve gone bonkers, how you’re not coping.”
I shrugged. “It’s probably true.”
“It’s not true, and you know it, Lucy,” Katie said. “The Cabinet wants you out of here because you told them where to go, so now other people are getting ideas. And Mrs. Grey wants you out because she thinks you don’t give a stuff about the school.”
If only Mrs. Grey knew how much mental energy I’d spent on Laurinda!
“We created the Cabinet but Mrs. Grey encourages them,” Katie said bitterly. “That’s why they’ve been allowed to run wild. She can’t afford to lose them because their mothers run the alumnae association and make massive donations.”
“No, Katie,” I snapped. “Do you want to know why Mrs. Grey loves the Cabinet? Because they maintain the Laurinda myth. They keep the dissenters in line. Sometimes they even cull the weak. A little accident here or there, and a troublesome girl or teacher is out. And they don’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts, do they, Katie? The payoff is that they get status and credit. They give posturing speeches about how great they are, but they steal and they maim.”
“I know, Lucy, I know,” said Katie. “That’s why I can’t let you go back to the library. You can’t retreat. You’ll be gone by the end of the year if you do. You can’t choose to be alone here with no one to back up your story.”
And here was the bitter paradox of adolescence: alone, I was most myself, most true. But the self that really mattered was the self that was visible, the self that could be shown to other people. And here was Katie, proposing something radical: that she would support whichever self I needed to be out in the world.