We Are Here

by Cat Thao Nguyen

  Despite the demands on my time made by law school, I returned to my old patterns of diverting my attention to other activities. I continued to serve on the national advisory committee to SBS and the management committee of the Ethnic Communities’ Council of New South Wales, while also undertaking an intensive ten-month social leadership program with the Benevolent Society. After returning from the UN, I also travelled around Australia on a national speaking tour. I was a member of the NGO delegation to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva while still working as a project consultant.

  As I kept busy with policy work, I found myself in rather interesting circumstances. On one occasion I dined at the New South Wales Governor’s residence with Princess Mary and Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark. I decided to wear a traditional Vietnamese dress. A man dressed in an amazing uniform with medals and a sword announced me to their royal highnesses. There were only about forty people at the dinner. Princess Mary was beautiful and Crown Prince Frederik was actually quite laidback. The residence was stunning, looking out over Sydney Harbour, surrounded by meticulously kept gardens. Despite the grandeur, I was too stressed about the array of cutlery to fully appreciate the fabulousness of the occasion. I had never seen so much cutlery and crockery at one meal in my life. Each plate and knife glistened with a gold rim and a crest. I pretended to enjoy my dinner while secretly petrified I would chew too loudly. Each time a new course was served, I stealthily watched what the other guests did with the cutlery and mimicked them while trying to look nonchalant. I tried hard to conceal the pressure I felt by nodding politely at the conversation. Finally, when the night ended, I made my way up the long driveway, shaded by giant trees, to catch a bus back to my shabby share house in Enmore, where I slept on a futon I’d borrowed from my Cambodian housemate.

  On another occasion, I was invited to speak at an Australian Chinese association dinner. It was a large dinner and I needed the support of my Cambodian housemate, so he accompanied me. The day of the dinner, he fussed over me and over some hours we workshopped what I would wear. He spray tanned my legs. On my left at the dinner was Kim Beazley, the federal leader of the opposition at the time and the only other speaker that evening. On my right was Justice Marcus Einfeld, a federal court judge, who a few years later would be imprisoned for perjury and attempting to pervert the course of justice. On the table next to me was Senator Penny Wong, who would become the first Asian-born and openly lesbian member of an Australian cabinet.

  I was wearing my $5 fake diamond drop earrings. When I had bought them, there was round piece of clear plastic at the back. I didn’t realise I was supposed to remove this before wearing them. At my dinner table was also the managing director of one of the largest jewellery companies in Sydney. After I gave my speech and sat down, the guests at my table congratulated me. At the end of the evening, the managing director approached me and gave me his card. ‘Any time you have an event where you need to borrow jewellery, you just let me know.’ My housemate stared at my plastic and fake diamond earrings. My cheeks flushed with awkward embarrassment as I nodded and thanked him.

  The community dinner was not complete without a raffle. The opposition leader gave me his raffle tickets, and to my delight I won. It was a year’s supply of fresh juice! My housemate and I were beside ourselves with glee.

  Law school was still as stifling as before, but this time I had a couple of allies. I met a brilliant professor of migration law. She was married to the Dean of the Law School at the time, who was a fiercely intelligent blind professor. She advocated for refugees and spoke about them with the deepest humanity. Her conviction was extraordinary and her sense of compassion and dedication to social justice motivated me to forge ahead. In between Intellectual Property, Media Law and Litigation, her classes became a beacon of inspiration and a sacred haven.

  Another ally was Brendan. I met him in one of my first Media Law classes. He had shoulder-length curly brown hair and wore the kind of square surf bag that only year five kids carried. I had on my usual headscarf, revealing bits of the platinum blonde streaks my Bankstown train station hairdresser had given me. I recalled Brendan’s face from a tutorial I’d attended when I was in first year with Peter. But despite being in the same course, I hadn’t seen him again in the intervening five years.

  When he called me out of the blue, I didn’t even know who he was, even after he told me his name. But I quickly discovered he wasn’t like everyone else. While at college, he would catch the train to Cabramatta on weekends to get sugarcane juice. His mates thought he was ‘eccentric’. He had taken a year off to travel, which was why he hadn’t finished his degree sooner. I came to realise that Brendan saw poetry in the same things I did. In the beauty of a floating leaf, the hidden messages in a song and the struggle to make the world a better place. His political conscience and worldview were cultivated not only by wise and socially aware parents but by confident and intelligent older sisters.

  Ours was a slow courtship as, after a game of pool, I dismissed the idea that he could possibly be interested in me. Like his father before him, he had attended The King’s School, one of the most elite private schools in Australia. After high school he lived on campus at Sydney University at another elite establishment, St Paul’s College.

  One evening we walked through Hyde Park, with the fairy lights scattered among the trees and the sun fast descending. We saw rays of light nimbly moving across the cold grass. We decided to chase the sun wherever it would take us. In every patch of light, we lay on the grass holding hands with the world dissolving around us as we remained protected by a halo of love.

  Brendan and I devised escapades that helped me to endure the rest of my time in law school. It seemed he was friends with everyone. I always felt uncomfortable when he introduced me to peers who didn’t even know I was enrolled there, despite the fact that there had been a colour photo of me on the noticeboard in the foyer ever since my UN assignment. My portrait had stayed on the noticeboard for months and each time I saw it, I would try to scurry into the lift like a cowering criminal, hoping to not be detected. Once I saw a group of students staring at my picture. One of them said, ‘Who’s that?’ ‘Dunno,’ the others replied.

  The first time I met Brendan’s parents was at their house on the South Coast at the foot of a small mountain. It was a picturesque hour-and-a-half drive from Sydney. I was nervous, anticipating an unfamiliar world. Outside the Vietnamese community, I had really only visited the homes of friends who were Greek, Albanian and Lebanese. When I arrived, though, I was greeted with warm smiles. I walked through the house Brendan grew up in, examining the timeline of photos, ribbons and trophies, newspaper clippings and toothless primary school smiles. It was exactly like the homes on family television shows. Images of little Brendan blowing into a trumpet, holding a cricket bat and sitting in a school assembly lingered through the house. As I walked through this beautiful museum, I wondered where my equivalent wall of growth was. Where was my history displayed? I recalled that in my grandfather’s house in Vietnam I had seen photos of myself as a child, as a teenager. Pictures my parents had sent over were displayed proudly. Birthdays, visits to the zoo. Our family shrine was there. My continuity was there. Not here.

  At Easter lunch in Brendan’s lovely house, the good china and silver were used and opera played while we ate. Jokes were told and gentle enquiries about me were made. As I drove back to my parents’ home, I cried at the contrast between lunch with Brendan’s family and Easter lunch with my parents in our small rented house and the humble food offerings to our ancestral/ Virgin Mary hybrid altar. How could my family ever interact comfortably with Brendan’s? Each meeting would be a gracious ‘Thank you for accepting us into your country,’ which Brendan’s parents would probably not know how to respond to unless they could squat on plastic mats and eat roasted pig heads. A flood of impossible images bobbed and drifted in my used car like a dirty oil spill, engulfing my mind. With my indelible angst and non-English-speaking paren
ts, how could my relationship with Brendan ever work?

  Brendan’s friends were mostly white and had attended private schools. One was a professional cricketer whose girlfriend who was a fashion model. Others were investment bankers, engineers and consultants. One evening we were invited to a dinner party in an exclusive apartment building in Potts Point. It was the first time I was to meet some of his friends. I had never been in such a setting before. The banker cooked tuna steaks. They asked about me and where I was from. When I mentioned Bankstown, one of the girls said people out there had an accent and used phrases like ‘Fully sick, bro.’ She tried to say the phrase in a Western Sydney accent, but it was a really pathetic attempt. I then volunteered how to say it properly. They all erupted in laughter. ‘Yes, that’s it!’

  That evening I felt I was at a masquerade. I felt I was betraying my heritage and my community by pretending to be part of a society I did not belong in, nor want to. Our worlds were so far apart.

  Brendan had moved to a share house in Redfern, a two-minute walk to university, after living for some time in Darlinghurst, a trendy area near the city. Shortly after, in December 2005, Sydney experienced its worst-ever manifestation of divisive racism in what became known as the Cronulla Riots. The riots erupted after some tussle on the beach between Anglo-Australians and Australians of Middle Eastern descent. It quickly turned violent, with hordes of youths from all over Sydney congregating to protect mosques after threats of arson were made. Anglo-Australians assumed the symbols of nationalism, draping themselves in the flag and wielding cricket bats. Random cars and people were bashed. It was ugly and terrifying. But as I watched these images beam from the television, I saw in many of the non-Anglo faces and heard in the roaring shaky voices the need for validation. The need for acceptance. How many generations must be born here before we were considered to be part of this country? All around Australia, people like me saw the rage and understood its underlying causes.

  I was at Brendan’s new place in Redfern, dissecting the incident with him. I spoke of how it felt for these Australians to be told to GO HOME from the country of their birth, and how when Australia was symbolised by cricket bats it only confirmed for many of us that this was not our country. It never would be. Brendan analysed the event more dispassionately. His point of view was intellectual. It was rational. It was insulting. I stormed out of the house and onto the street where my car was parked. He followed, begging me to get out of the car, arguing that I shouldn’t drive in my state.

  ‘You will never know what it is like for people like us!’ I screamed at him in the disinterested open air. ‘You will never understand what racism is and yet you will decide what will become of us, you will decide everything for us!’ I saw him as another expression of oppression.

  That night Brendan became the Them to my Us. No matter how hard I tried, I would never be able to forgive him for his privilege. I recalled my father’s threat when I was sixteen; he would disown me, he’d said, if I ever dated a white boy. This memory was still attached to me like a lead ankle cuff. Despite my growing independence, I still couldn’t bring myself to defy my father; I had not yet told my parents about Brendan.

  In my last year of law school, I wanted to earn extra money, so I got a part-time job working for the TAB, the leading horse and sports betting company. I worked at the racecourse each Saturday, taking bets. I learned all about Boxed Quinellas and Superfectas. I was placed in a different part of the venue each week. The public area was the most colourful, with pensioners in shorts mingling with brides-to-be on a hen’s weekend. Many betters would wait until the last few seconds when they were enlightened with some equine intuition before they placed their bets. Often it would be a mixed string of bets and varying dollar values. But the days would all end the same—girls holding their heels in their hands, some vomiting in the bathroom, some faces drooping with disappointment, others gleeful.

  Several times I saw people from law school in the VIP pavilion. The girls were glowing with spray tans, fascinators and glossy game-show smiles. I would always shrink into my coloured uniform vest, the mandatory TAB scarf around my neck soaking up my sweat and humiliation. In those moments, I didn’t see it as just a job, but as yet another reminder: Me on the service side and Them drinking from champagne flutes. In the seconds just after the races were over, when the roar of the ravenous crowd had throbbed to a climax and then fizzled, sometimes I daydreamed about attending the races as a spectator—a free agent wearing a lacy dress, poised with a glass of sparkling wine and a perfectly positioned hat. Maybe one day. After law school was over.

  In between my relationship with Brendan, various jobs, policy work and class, the clerkship season had come around. Each year the elite law students would vie for placements at the giant and illustrious corporate law firms of Sydney. Usually the placement would guarantee a graduate position. A clerkship at one of the top firms meant admission to yet another exclusive club. Even if they didn’t want to be a corporate lawyer, the frenzied formula of competitive selection coerced many students to apply anyway for the chance to don a badge of prestige. I too put in an application and was shocked to find out that I had two interviews. Both were top-five law firms housed in buildings with harbour views and their own catering service. One had awarded me a scholarship and so I reasoned had probably granted me an interview out of a sense of obligation.

  I was busy running from a community meeting to one of the interviews and I didn’t have a jacket. I had on black pants and a white collared shirt – aka my TAB uniform. On the way to the interview, I decided to drop by Pitt Street Mall in the centre of town to see if I could find anything appropriate. To my relief, I found a decent jacket on sale. With eyes honed from our sweatshop years, I knew immediately it was a cheap polyester blend, but I hoped the interviewers wouldn’t be able to tell. Before I went to the interview, I needed to drop by the law school library to return a book before I got fined.

  After my hasty purchase I ran into the law school foyer and jabbed at the lift button—my portrait on the noticeboard still staring out at me. As I stepped into the lift, a girl joined me. She looked at me and then said politely, pointing at my armpit, ‘Um, excuse me, your tag is still on your jacket.’

  I looked down. A bright red SALE tag glared back at me. It was luminescent. Horrified, I tried to conceal my embarrassment by saying casually, ‘Oh yeah, thanks, I was wondering if anyone would tell me.’

  By the time I got to the interview, I was a dishevelled mess. The interviewer’s name was Warwick. I had never come across this as the name of a person before. My friends all had either easy-to-pronounce Christian names or their own ethnic ones. Throughout the interview, I pronounced the silent W in the middle—War-wick—which was how the Vietnamese pronounced Warwick Farm. Only later, when I spoke to Brendan, did I understand why Warwick had winced slightly whenever I said his name.

  I hoped I would do better at the interview with the second firm. I met with two of the partners, a man and a woman. The woman seemed nice enough. When it came time for me to ask questions, instead of asking about the firm’s strategies to expand into Asia or the number of oil and gas joint ventures it had advised on, I asked, ‘If you had chosen a career other than law, what would you have chosen?’ I was interested to see what sort of people they were. The man said he might have been a yachtsman because he loved sailing. The woman said, ‘Maybe a writer.’

  That got me excited. ‘What’s your favourite book?’ I asked.

  ‘There are so many, but I really like The Unbearable Lightness of Being.’

  ‘Yes, that’s a good one,’ I agreed.

  Silence.

  I thought it had gone well, but I wasn’t offered a place at either firm. I was pretty sure that my future lay in social justice anyway. As the final classes drew to a close, I finished my placement at the Refugee Advice and Casework Service as well as the Aboriginal Legal Centre in Redfern. I got a job at the New South Wales Legal Aid Commission, primarily working on criminal
appeal cases as well as the Balibo Five inquest. (When Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, five Australian journalists who had been based in Balibo were murdered.)

  I had some extraordinary experiences. Each day was an adventure. I sought out blood experts, analysed police briefs, dissected six months of surveillance in a conspiracy matter, reviewed case law to mount a defence, wrote memos for clients on their civil law matters, prepared cross-examination questions regarding autopsy reports, and ached at the desperation of those who were born into rape, alcoholism and poverty and now were accused of crimes. More often than not it was almost impossible for them not to become a statistic. As I flicked through criminal records in preparation for sentencing submissions, I realised how so many people became dehumanised in case files and numbers. On one occasion I accompanied a barrister to the psychiatric ward of a maximum-security prison to meet with our client regarding his plea in a grave sexual assault case. Inside the prison, a gallery space contained recycled trauma, pain and mental illness, transformed into artworks. For many other prisoners, despite the art program, their hurt lived on in nightmares and a continuing life of crime. In the taxi ride back to the office, I spoke with the barrister about a variety of things. He was interested in the art. Our conversation meandered between references to the case, to the overall ‘Aboriginal Situation’ and to fashion. A few years later, I read that he committed suicide. I realised that everyone’s pain was relative, only to them.

  Brendan became a lawyer before me. He got a job in rural New South Wales as a criminal lawyer. One weekend, we drove the four hours from Sydney to his rented flat in Wagga Wagga. I stayed for a week to help him set up. I bought second-hand furniture at St Vinnies and cooked him Thai, Italian and Vietnamese meals. I walked up and down the main strip trying to find another Asian person. I finally found one working at the ice-cream parlour. Sometimes we ate counter meals at the pub. During the day, I watched Oprah and Dr Phil. I dressed up, listened to rock music and drank dirty martinis alone like a bored housewife. At night Brendan would bring piles of case files home and we would analyse the evidence like we were in law school again. Classes seemed so far away. But this was real life now. They weren’t just the Accused. These were real people. Brendan wrote Spanish poetry for me while we listened to Leonard Cohen. Despite the little world we had created for ourselves, I felt the film of our bubble thinning as the cricket community club beckoned and he was drawn more and more into the life of the country town. Something that I could never fathom being a part of.