Small Bamboo

by Tracy Vo

  During one lunch break in that first year at school I was playing on the oval with a group of other girls. I thought I had finally made friends, and I was enjoying my peanut butter sandwich. For some reason the others started talking about the colour of our skins. I can’t remember how or why. I didn’t say anything because it just didn’t occur to me that I was any different.

  But then one girl singled me out. ‘Look at Tracy’s skin. You’re not like us at all. You’re so dark!’

  All the girls just pointed and laughed at me. And if that wasn’t enough, she had one more dig: ‘You have ugly skin!’

  The girls shrieked with laughter. I was crushed.

  I didn’t understand the situation. It seemed bizarre to me. The girl judging me was from Argentina; she had beautiful olive skin and it was darker than my complexion. Maybe it was because I was the only Asian girl in the group and my features were different. I guess I was just the odd one out. I was so embarrassed. I didn’t know what to say, so I just burst into tears and ran away. The girls stopped laughing. I bolted into a toilet cubicle and shut the door. I was sobbing and struggling to breathe.

  The school’s Grade 2 teacher must have seen me running and crying and came after me. She had taught my brother so she knew who I was.

  ‘Tracy, sweetheart. Open the door,’ the teacher said. ‘Talk to me.’

  Her voice was soft and warm. I opened the door.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  I was crying uncontrollably and couldn’t properly explain. The teacher wiped away my tears and tried to calm me down. ‘Come on. Let’s go to my classroom and we can talk.’

  She walked with me to her room and sat down with me. ‘Now tell me what happened,’ she said.

  ‘Miss, that girl said I had ugly skin. She said it was dark and that I wasn’t like everyone else. Miss, am I really different?’

  The teacher looked like she wanted to cry for me.

  The group of girls followed us to the classroom to see what was wrong with me. I don’t think they realised the impact of that one comment.

  The teacher was furious. ‘Get out of here, you horrible little girl!’ she said to the one who’d made the comment about my ugly skin.

  There was a deafening silence. I’m not sure why the teacher was so fired up, and she probably shouldn’t have said that to a child, but I felt protected. The other girl just stood there. The teacher quickly calmed down.

  ‘Just wait outside and I will come out to talk to you in a moment,’ she said to the girls. Then she turned back to me. ‘Tracy, ignore everything those girls said to you. You don’t have ugly skin. You are a beautiful girl. Never let the nasty things that people say upset you.’

  She looked at me with a sincere and sympathetic expression in her eyes then walked out and spoke quietly to the other girl. I watched them through the window. Meanwhile the other girls came back into the classroom and started apologising to me.

  ‘Tracy, we’re sorry.’

  ‘We didn’t want to upset you.’

  ‘She didn’t know what she was saying and we don’t know why we laughed at you.’

  I just sat there. I didn’t know how to respond. We were only six years old, after all.

  Eventually the girl who’d said I had ugly skin came into the classroom and apologised too.

  That incident affected me. I went home that day and tried to scrub my arms to see if I could make them lighter. It was so ridiculous—I thought I could rub the colour off my skin! I continued to do this for a few more days until I realised nothing was going to change my skin colour.

  I didn’t tell my parents about my ordeal at school. I didn’t want to worry or burden them. I guess the teacher had talked some sense into the girl because a couple of weeks later she came up to me in the playground and put her arm next to mine.

  ‘Hi, Tracy. We’re exactly the same.’ She smiled at me.

  When I think about it now, it was no big deal really. Children say the darnedest things. It was obvious this girl’s family hadn’t educated her about other cultures and races and she had no idea what she was saying. But it’s a memory that has always stuck in my mind. It must be because of my Scorpio trait. When you’re burned, you never forget it. You can forgive but you never forget. Even though all that happened at such a young age, I carried the paranoia that people looked at me differently for a very long time. It was such a small comment but had such a huge impact. I think it was also a shock to my system because Trevor and I had been very spoilt by our friendships in our neighbourhood—playing cricket, riding our bikes and playing board games with Trevor’s mates, I never felt different. Until I started school. Trevor says he was lucky as he had really good mates in school as well and never experienced any racism when he was growing up. He’s only had to face racist attitudes as an adult, and these were just one-off comments from drunken, uneducated thugs, which never bothered him.

  When he was growing up, my brother was a very talented basketball player. In fact, he still is. Trevor’s tall for an Asian bloke, and as a kid he was very quick on his feet and skilled with the ball. Basketball became a huge part of my childhood too, as every weekend we would travel all over Perth for his games. It was quite an adventure. As the years went by we would travel more often, especially when he became captain of one of the teams in the state basketball league, the Stirling Senators. We were very proud when he was given that title. I looked up to Trevor. It was very cool to have an older brother who was the captain of a state team. I was also in awe of his athleticism; I was never sporty when I was young.

  We all had the chance to meet many people from the northern suburbs during these trips. My folks met the parents of other players and we became part of a small travelling community centred around basketball matches. My brother built strong friendships with some of the other players and most of them were friendly towards me and my family too, but I remember one who was terribly rude.

  He was one of the guys in my brother’s team and it happened in the middle of a game. Trevor was still on court but this player had been subbed off. He kept smirking and looking at me, a seat away, as I concentrated on the game.

  ‘Hey, you’re Trevor’s sister, aren’t ya?’ he finally said.

  I was extremely shy when I was younger. I didn’t want to talk to this guy so I just nodded. Then he laughed at me. I didn’t understand why he was laughing. I thought it was odd.

  ‘Are you some kind of squid or something?’

  I scrunched up my face. I had no idea what he was talking about. The guy just shook his head, as if I were an idiot.

  ‘You don’t know what a squid is?’ he said in a smartarse tone.

  The bully had found his perfect target—an eleven-year-old girl who didn’t understand what he was saying. Trying to intimidate me more, he moved into the seat next to me to explain.

  ‘Well, you’re Asian and you wear glasses. Only means one thing . . .’

  I still didn’t know what he meant but I knew he was making fun of me. I could feel the tears welling up.

  ‘You’re an Asian nerd!’ He started laughing loudly in my face.

  I hadn’t encountered such a cruel person before. I knew that children can be cruel to each other but I hadn’t expected to cop comments like that from someone older. I’d seen him sucking up to my brother because he was captain of the team, and now he was picking on me, the nerdy Asian sister. I built up the courage to answer back.

  ‘No, I am not!’ was all I could manage, but he was still stunned that I had dared to speak.

  ‘Well, you look it!’ he blustered and quickly moved back to his original seat. I stared at him as he watched the game but he ignored me. It was as if he had never spoken to me. I had no idea why he felt he had to behave like that. After a few moments I ran into the toilets and cried.

  My parents were at the other end of the court so they didn’t see what happened, but Trevor must have. After the game, he asked me what the guy had said. I told him, ‘Nothing,’ and walked
away; I didn’t want to talk about it. Maybe I was a nerd, or a squid, or whatever you call it, but to be stereotyped because of how I looked, because of my race, was crushing. It shattered what little confidence I had.

  I avoided this guy after that and never looked at him again. He never apologised. He was a bully. I decided that the best way to beat him was with silence. I only told my brother this story recently, decades later. At first Trevor was shocked, and quite devastated.

  ‘What a wanker! He was a bloody spoilt brat anyway. I never liked that kid!’

  You said it, Trev.

  When I was a child I struggled with my heritage and my nationality. Was I Australian, or was I Vietnamese? I was confused. I was trying to find a balance between my roots and my homeland, but I didn’t know which I related to more. I did feel comfortable with my parents’ Vietnamese friends and their families. They certainly brought me a lot of joy during my younger years. But at school I felt like an outcast. I wasn’t cool enough. I had a funny nose, and an annoying laugh. I was confronted with that sort of bullying every day. For hours every day I would stroke my nose upwards so it wouldn’t be so flat. I would tell myself that when I was older I would save enough money to get a nose job.

  The bullies at school would not only pick on me but also try to find ways of getting me into trouble. They would teach me rude words, which I didn’t know the meaning of, and force me to say them in front of the teachers. Then I felt like an idiot because I didn’t understand what they were saying or what those rude words meant. They took advantage of the fact that I was still learning English. It was awful.

  I have never really spoken about my time in primary school. When people ask me about my childhood, I say it was a good one. I focus on the earlier years with Trevor’s mates. They were fun days. And the times with my family and the Vietnamese community. I remember them with joy. But somehow I managed to block those primary school years out of my mind. I don’t think I realised how much impact they had had on me until now, when I’ve been forced to think about the past. It makes me sad to remember how young I was when I felt like an outcast, when I felt so very lonely.

  15

  HOLLYWOOD HIGH

  It took me a very long time to feel comfortable within myself. If I had thought the primary school days were tough, the teenage years were even tougher. I believe it was even tougher for me because of my background. I felt like my life was a constant battle between my two selves—Vietnamese and Australian. By the time I was about to enter high school, my relationship with my parents was strained, and it would only get worse.

  My parents were extremely strict and we struggled to find a compromise. They wanted their children to study hard and get good jobs. They didn’t want their children to waste a bright future in Australia nor did they want their escape from Vietnam for a better life to be wasted. They had rules, but of course I wanted to be like any other Aussie teenager, and I wanted freedom. So I started making friends with other Vietnamese–Australian kids who would not only know and understand what it was like to have Vietnamese parents but also sympathise with me about how strict they were. But these friendships didn’t last long.

  My parents are an intuitive pair. When they met some of these Vietnamese–Australian friends, they did not like them at all. They felt they lacked education and that, if I were to remain friends with them, I would be heading down the wrong path. I resented my folks for that—they wouldn’t even allow me to choose my own friends! I was angry, frustrated and felt they controlled my entire life. Now I can see how wrong I was.

  When I finished primary school, I hoped that high school would be a much better and more enjoyable experience. Despite my parents virtually banning me from seeing those Vietnamese–Australian friends, I still begged them to send me to the same school they were to attend. I was determined to convince them that my friends’ school was better for me. But I didn’t come up with any good reasons.

  My parents already had a school in mind—Hollywood Senior High School in Perth’s western suburbs. I didn’t even know where it was. I pleaded with them to send me to a high school in the northern suburbs. I figured that, even if I wasn’t enrolled at the same school as my Vietnamese–Australian mates, I could at least hang out with them after school. Trevor had been sent to Aranmore College, a Catholic school in inner city Perth, and I was even hoping to go there; at least I’d be at the same school as my brother. But Mum and Dad kept telling me, ‘Hollywood is a great school. You’ll do well there. It’s the right school for you. Don’t worry, you’ll make new friends.’

  My parents had heard a lot about Hollywood, a well-known and highly regarded public school. Paralympian Louise Sauvage and politicians Kim Beazley and Colin Barnett were among its former students. It had a good reputation, an excellent academic record. But I didn’t care about any of that.

  I didn’t realise it at the time, but I was suffering from a lot of anxiety before I started high school. My mind was always clouded by negative thoughts; I wasn’t free of them.

  So I reluctantly attended induction day at Hollywood. It was one of the hardest days I experienced at that school. Again I felt judged—the nerdy Asian girl with glasses. Who would want to be friends with me? It might have all been in my head but it was something that I was always conscious of.

  I am the first to admit, however, I was a nerd. My clothes were daggy and my glasses were giant circles that did nothing for my face. I was quite lost in the fashion stakes, as most young teenagers are. And I was nervous because I didn’t know anyone at the new school. It was frightening. I was still extremely shy and I didn’t want to speak to anyone. I was even afraid to say ‘hello’. I wished I was invisible. I spent most of the morning wanting to run into the nearest toilet and cry.

  But late in the morning, as we were shown around the school in groups, I did meet some very friendly and kind girls. They didn’t know anyone else at the school either, so we bonded over that. We had lunch together in the quadrangle and exchanged our stories. None of the girls had any idea where Hamersley or Our Lady of Lourdes Primary School in Nollamara were.

  ‘Wow! You’re really not from around here, are you?’ was a common reaction.

  The day ended with a swim in the school pool, where I met a few more students. There were some other girls who seemed very ‘cool for school’, and I could feel them looking at me, critiquing me and my bathers, but I tried to ignore them. By the end of the day I was surprised to find that I wasn’t completely deflated, so I told myself to give the school a chance.

  Because the high school was in Nedlands, about 20 kilometres away from our home, the plan was that Mum would drop me off in the mornings and I would catch two trains and a bus home. The journey home would take more than an hour.

  The first day of school arrived in a flash and I actually felt quite excited. It was still very daunting but the day started off smoothly. I was getting to classes with ease, navigating my way through the crowds of students. Then I was in my first English class where I sat down and opened my bag. One of the boys sitting next to me started giggling.

  ‘Wow, that’s a huge backpack! Why did you buy one so big?’ he said.

  I had this purple Rip Curl backpack which I thought was cool. It was rather large, though, and even after I put all my books in it, there was still so much space I could have chucked other students’ books and bags in there as well.

  The kid kept going. ‘Seriously, you could fit in that backpack!’

  The other students surrounded my desk, wanting to check out the ridiculous backpack this short Asian girl was carrying. There were a lot more jokes, and for the rest of the day my classmates kept asking if they could put their books into my bag and laughing. I was mortified. As soon as I got home, I asked Mum to take me to the shops to buy a new (smaller) one. Though I never got rid of that purple backpack. I still use it for storage!

  That first day pretty much set the theme for my first year of high school—it was tough. I didn’t make any friends I felt
completely at ease with. I found it difficult to spend time with classmates outside school hours because I lived so far away. I was anxious I wasn’t going to make close friends. I dreaded the next five years; it seemed like forever. Once again I begged my parents to send me to another school, closer to home. But Mum and Dad didn’t budge. They wanted me to stay at Hollywood; they said it would be good for my future, they wanted me to focus on my studies and nothing else. I don’t think they really understood the torment a teenager goes through in high school when they don’t have any close friends.

  I was bullied almost every day in my first year. It was just the usual schoolyard teasing, not physically violent or racial, but belittling nonetheless. I would go home and cry myself to sleep at night. Somehow, though, I managed to survive Year 8. The summer holidays couldn’t come fast enough and gave me time to reflect and also to have a break from the daily strain of having to be somewhere I hated. I kept telling myself that Hollywood wasn’t that bad, compared to what I’d experienced in primary school. There was more diversity at Hollywood, with students from all sorts of backgrounds. But I was still very conscious of what I looked like and of my nationality. Thinking about it now, I can’t put my finger on it. Why was I so paranoid? Certainly no one in high school had fuelled this paranoia. I think my past experiences affected me so much that I just talked myself into this negative state. It was all in my head.

  When Year 9 came along, I felt a little more confident and not quite so apprehensive about school. I was making some friends, but continued to struggle to find a group in which I felt accepted. I went from one bunch of friends to another but, because I was a nerd, I always had that urge to be part of the ‘cool group’. My experience in primary school really rocked me so I guess I was constantly trying to claw my way in somewhere. However, I quickly realised that cool isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be and friendships are formed through trust and having the freedom to be yourself.