Salt-N-Pepa. I wanted to be as far away from those two condiment shakers as I could possibly get, and if further change was on offer, then thank you very much, I also wanted to be a little less like me. I wanted less springy black Afro curl, eyes less the color of wet potting mix. I craved skin a little milkier than the specific shade of strong-coffee-with-a-dash-of-milk I was.
I never for one minute wanted to be Madonna or Olivia Newton-John or Kylie Minogue. I was already a realist. Besides which, I thought Melinda Meyer, the most popular girl in grade three (who looked most like I imagined Madonna or Olivia or Kylie would look up close), looked odd. Melinda’s yellow curls were two shades lighter than her sun-tanned skin. Her eyes were the exact green of the Friday-night beer bottles my dad drank from, and drained just as empty. Looking like Melinda was the last thing I craved. All I wanted was to be a little less me, but nobody understood this, and I didn’t know quite how to articulate it so they could.
Every lunchtime, instead of playing Catch and Kiss, I read in the library. I liked it in the library, though I knew enough to suspect that in real life the mothers of Stoneybrook would never have let Jessi, Claudia, or any other brown-skinned girl anywhere near their immaculately blond-bobbed children, even with the endorsement of the rest of Ann M. Martin’s Babysitters Club.
* * *
The knock at the classroom door rapped out so loudly the whole class knew it was Mr. James, the school principal, and almost all of us froze. The only time Jailhouse James knocked in person was when a child was wanted for detention or there had been a complaint about a teacher. Us kids most feared the former, but in this case, the latter was distinctly possible.
Mr. Wilkinson, my grade-three teacher, was a renegade, by local standards. His thick, dark brown hair was always slicked back into a ponytail that hung down between his shoulder blades. He lived in a caravan out on an acreage property on the edge of the village, and preferred jeans and band T-shirts to the pleat pants and short-sleeved collared shirts the few other male teachers at the school wore. According to Melinda Meyer’s mother, who was head of the Parents and Citizens Committee, Mr. Wilkinson was a layabout hippie.
“Class, there’s somebody new and exciting we’re going to meet!” Mr. Wilkinson grinned around the room as we hurried to pack away the brightly colored times-tables cards that had been stacked in the middle of each cluster of desks.
The door opened and Mr. James walked briskly in, scanning the room with his scary fake smile. “Good morning, 3D,” he barked.
“Goood moooorning, Miister Jaaames,” came the singsong reply.
Local rumor had it that Mr. James had been to Vietnam, in the war. Something evil had happened there, something odd, even for wartime, and the myth was that because of that thing, he had been guaranteed a cushy public-service job on his return. Melinda’s mum reckoned the Viet Cong had captured him and done God knew what to make him the way he was. I didn’t know who the Viet Cong were, but they sounded fierce and exciting, and if they could take someone like Mr. James hostage, I was in absolutely no doubt as to their power. In summer, Mr. James always turned off the ceiling fans before he entered a classroom. Melinda Meyer said the fans reminded him of the slit-eyed Chinks, up there in choppers, coming for him.
Mr. James surveyed the schoolyard most lunchtimes as if inspecting the ranks: hands clasped behind his back, head raised as he marched the concrete path that wound its way from the main cluster of buildings, down past the basketball court, through the primary play area and then back up through the infant school. During inspection Mr. James never strayed onto the grass but walked the path in short, sharp movements, the soles of his polished black lace-ups falling heavily on the pavement. In the event he spotted unacceptable behavior—a perfectly good sandwich being thrown out, a shoving incident on the basketball court—he’d stop dead. “Oi! You!” he’d shout, extending the index finger of his upturned right hand, beckoning the culprits over to him.
A skinny pair of legs and bright red Cooper Hill Public School backpack poked out from behind where the principal was stiffly standing. Mr. Wilkinson walked over to Mr. James and took the new student by the hand. Her lips trembled as she stepped into view. Mr. Wilkinson pulled his sweaty Eurythmics T-shirt away from his chest, airing himself. He rested his pale hand on the new girl’s shiny black hair.
“Kids, this is Shu Yi.”
Shu Yi was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen—seemed so otherworldly I was convinced she was from another planet entirely. Her skin was a little lighter than mine, and her eyes a little more almond in shape. She blinked over caramel-colored irises, nervously touched the straight charcoal hair cut close around her high cheekbones. The strands of Shu Yi’s hair were thin and wispy, like the black threads that hung from the Hiawatha skirt my mother had made me for the book week parade earlier in the year.
Shu Yi was exactly what I would have been like, if I were a little less me. Where I was flat white with an extra shot, Shu Yi was colored weak Milo. My soft, thick lips could suck a McThickShake through a yellow-and-red-striped straw no problem, but the new girl’s features were delicate, as if crafted from fine porcelain. I stared, mesmerized, as her nervous wafer fingers brushed the hair from her face again.
The new girl was always quiet: head bowed, hair drawn across her face like a heavy black curtain. She sat alone during recess, fingertips disappearing into her round red Tupperware lunchbox and emerging tight around spicy-smelling clumps of rice.
The day after Shu Yi started at our school, we were in the back corner of the library during reading time, and Melinda Meyer said, “My mum said this country is going to the fucken dogs. We’re thinking about moving out to Windsor because even Baulkham Hills is starting to look like another fucken country.”
She said it in the kind of loud whisper you use when you really want everybody to hear. Melinda’s mother’s word was gospel on our playground, and her daughter a willing oracle.
“What country is this place starting to look like?” asked Glenn Hopkins.
“I don’t know. Maybe Africa or something.” Melinda smirked across the reading circle toward me as she turned the page of her Golden Book.
Shu Yi’s life became a misery. When she walked out the back gate in the afternoons, misshapen spitball constellations stood out against her satin hair. She returned from snack time missing frilly socks, scrunchies, or sparkly hair clips, her eyes puffy and downcast.
I buried my face in the library’s big Hans Christian Andersen, hunkered down in the worn gray bean bag in Fairy-tale Corner. Wondrous as she seemed, Shu Yi wasn’t a problem I wanted to take on. Besides, with her arrival my own life had become easier: Melinda and the others hadn’t come looking for me in months. At home, my thankful mother had finally taken the plastic undersheet off my bed.
* * *
My mother always went quiet when she wanted to talk to one of us kids about something serious. If she cleared the plates from the kitchen table after dinner in ponderous silence, you prayed it wasn’t you she had to talk to, and tried to make yourself scarce. On this particular evening she cleared away the almost-full plates of apricot chicken without so much as a reprimand.
“Ava? Stay here a minute,” she said. My brother and sister crept from the kitchen, relieved.
I sat staring at the woven cane placemat, digging a stray pea from one of the holes with my finger.
“I was just wondering, Ave,” she said, sitting down across from me, patting her curly hair in place, “how that new girl’s getting on. What’s her name again?”
“Shu Yi.” I willed the conversation to finish.
“Shu Yi. Well, she doesn’t seem very happy,” she said softly. “I mean, I never see her walking with anyone on the playground. Do you talk to her?”
“Um. She doesn’t really speak much English.”
“I see.” My mother’s eyes were boring into me. “When you start at a new school, it can be really difficult to fit in. Sometimes, if you’re different, it can
be difficult to fit in even if you’ve been there since the very beginning.”
“Whatever.”
She stared at me expectantly.
Our mother had worked tirelessly to fit our brown-skinned family of five into the conservative white suburbia in which we somehow found ourselves. Our entire neighborhood seemed built around the Mecca of Mum: the school cafeteria worker, school fete organizer, and office holder for the Kellyville Reciprocal Babysitting Club. On rare occasions, though, I would see another side of her. We’d be in the Castle Hill shopping mall searching for winter pajamas or piling into the car on Saturday after Little Athletics, and suddenly the woman would freeze, eyes wide and fixed in the other direction staring at something. Then us kids would be unbuckled at the speed of light and bustled across the road, or shoveled into the shopping cart as it screeched over to the other side of the supermarket. We came to recognize the cause of these impromptu dashes: my mother had spied, lurking conspicuously on the periphery of our whitewashed surburban lives, another black woman.
A visit would usually follow closely after, and inevitably there’d be other black children present. Directed by the adults to go play outside, we’d stand gaping at each other: them and us—total strangers somehow expected to bond as kin. As with any family gatherings of this kind there were sometimes connections, firm friendships leading to reciprocal visits. Then there were those other encounters, in which, despite our mirrored scuffed-gray knees, knotty Afros and way-too-smart-for-Aussie-children special-occasion attire, the kids we visited with were as unlike us as the local louts who threw stones at us at the BMX track on Greenwood Road.
Right now, my mother had that visit look on her face. “I was thinking maybe we should go and speak to Mr. James about what’s going on.”
“What are you talking about, Mum? Nothing’s going on.” I felt sick to my stomach. “It’s nothing to do with us if Shu Yi can’t make her own friends.”
“Tomorrow morning,” my mother said, in the tone that meant the conversation was closed. She rose slowly from the table, disappointment etched into her face.
* * *
The school bell rang, and from where I sat in the front office, I could hear several hundred feet thundering across the asphalt. I wanted to join them—to grab my bag from the floor, throw it over my shoulder and stumble down the stairs into morning assembly.
The school creed drifted up through the office windows. “This is our school. Let peace dwell here. Let the rooms be full of happiness.”
I had never been so close to the principal’s office before. I fidgeted on the scratchy chair, wiping my sweaty palms on the woven seat covers. The school secretary looked over again, in disapproval.
“Let love abide here: love of God, love of one another, and love of life itself,” came the chorus from the playground below.
My mother’s raised voice drifted out of the principal’s partly open door. “No, Ian, I’m not saying she should be treated any differently from any other new student. It’s just pretty obvious to all and sundry that the girl’s being bullied.”
“Are you accusing one of my students of harassment?” Mr. James’s reply was sharp. “Has Ava reported anything? Has the . . . girl reported anything?”
“Oh, come off it, Ian.” Mum’s voice was softer now, like she was trying to reason with him. “Any fool can see what’s going on.”
“Mrs. Dalley . . .” Mr. James said. From the way his voice wavered, I could tell he had risen to show my mother the door. “This girl is just going to have to learn how to get on. You can’t come to this country and expect everybody to bend over backward so you feel comfortable.”
The door opened wide. My mother stormed out of the office, walking straight past me. I grabbed my bag and followed her down the stairs.
“Racist prick,” my mother said under her breath. We walked across the schoolyard following the line of students heading toward my classroom.
I had never before heard her swear.
* * *
Mum gently shoved me into the classroom, the curious eyes of the rest of the class fixed on me. Mr. Wilkinson stepped out into the cloakroom to speak with her, closing the door behind him. I walked to my desk and busied myself putting away my pencil case and homework book, ignoring the twenty-three pairs of eyes fixed curiously on my back. After a few minutes the classroom door opened again. Mr. Wilkinson gestured for me and Shu Yi to join the two of them in the cloakroom.
“Ava, your mother says Shu Yi has been having some trouble adjusting at school.”
I stared at the rows of red schoolbags, all hanging on their hooks. The black kookaburras embroidered on each front pocket glared at me, the school motto trumpeting from each of their beaks: PLAY THE GAME.
“Ava?” Mum sounded agitated now.
Shu Yi was looking at the ground. Her head was bowed so low that I could see the tuft at the back of her head where Glenn had cut a chunk of her hair during art class the previous week.
“Ava,” said Mr. Wilkinson gently, “I know you can be relied on to help Shu Yi to feel comfortable at her new school.”
Shu Yi raised her eyes from the ground, fixed them hopefully on me.
* * *
I hurried out of class at lunchtime, not even bothering to get my lunchbox from my backpack. I could feel Shu Yi following me all the way from the grade-three seats up past the staff room. She walked several meters behind, keeping close to the brick wall as if it would somehow camouflage her movements. Glancing in the glass door of the library I saw her behind me, stooping to place her red lunchbox on the library steps before quietly following me in.
As I made my way to Fairy-tale Corner, all I could think about was that round red lunchbox out there on the library steps. I could taste vomit in my mouth. Shu Yi probably knew nothing of bulls and flags, or the breadcrumb trails Hansel and Gretel left when they were led into the dark forest—she probably thought leaving food outside was good etiquette.
A shadow fell across where Snugglepot and Cuddlepie were sitting on the eucalyptus log on page four of the book that was balanced in my lap. Shu Yi was standing in front of my bean bag. Her slim shadow moved, and cast the Banksia Men into darkness. I clenched my hands around the open cover of the book, willing the girl to walk away.
The library door opened. Footsteps clattered onto the foyer linoleum, then padded onto the reading area carpet. I knew without looking up what kind of company we had.
“Please, I sit here with you today.” Usually when Shu Yi spoke she scrabbled for words, eyes rolling inward as if searching the far reaches of her mind for a translation. This request came stilted but sure. As if she’d been practicing that morning before her bathroom mirror as she brushed the rice porridge from between her slightly crooked teeth.
Shu Yi glanced behind her as Melinda and her mates semicircled around us, turned back to me pleadingly. I slammed the book shut and whispered—the loud, hissing kind of whisper you really want everyone in the room to hear—“Fuck off, you filthy Chink.”
Melinda laughed, repeating my comment to the tittering group of kids.
Shu Yi’s eyes locked with mine. A thin trickle traveled out from the bottom of her uniform and down the inside of her legs, soaking slowly into her frilly white socks.
Railton Road
HIS FIRST night at the rebel squat, Solomon dreamed he was ancient Africa, stretched out wide and deep center-globe, cradling a people. On his lower left shoulder in southern Togo, their mahogany faces caked with thick white clay paint, the Anlo Ewe people stamped thanks to the sky god Mawu-Lisa. The blood of young goats was a warm iron-filled offering, sinking into the sandy earth of the villages spread across his muscular chest.
Solomon dreamed he was Africa, and the Songhay people were conjuring spirit Hauka which danced light-footed across the black-earth ridges of his startled nipple, trapped inside the bucking bodies of taken tribespeople. Village messengers, djembes slung across their backs, gently drummed their cryings up and down his rib cage, r
ocking him back to sleep. Solomon dreamed he was ancient Africa, and his history had no beginning. He dreamed he was forever, remembering more than centuries.
The rebel hub at 121 Railton Road, Brixton, was inhabited by fiery like-minded black youths from all over England. The occupants of Railton Road were bell-jeaned, dome-Afroed, Doc Martened and muscle-teed: as bad and black as they could possibly muster themselves to be, with yearning amber eyes filled with each other and runaway tongues tripping with talk of equality.
Railton Road was a hive of activity. The squat’s many bedrooms were wall to wall with mattresses and tatty multicolored blankets. The shop in the property’s lower half was busy twenty-four seven with placard-making tables and the day-and-night thunder and thud of an aging printing press. The cauldron-like pot in the informal cooking pit of the small garden was always brimming. So much so that almost a hundred random brown folk with little aspiration toward black empowerment regularly dropped by the place as if it were a soup kitchen, trading an hour’s work manning the printing press or distributing pamphlets for shelter on a bitter night or a steaming hot-pot meal.
In response to ongoing police harassment and eviction attempts, the hand-painted sign permanently tacked to the front of the property read: Legal warning: this property has been occupied by squatters. we intend to stay here. if you try to evict us, we will prosecute. you must deal with us through the courts. Time and again the Railton Road Panthers were arrested for squatting on the property, but despite double deadbolts, police barricading, and barred windows, they inevitably scaled, fought, or burrowed their way back in on release.
“This is my property. And the law says I have to waste my valuable time attending court to get these hooligans evicted. It’s bloody outrageous!” the landlord seethed into the BBC camera as he forced his shoulder hard against the front door, to no avail.
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