Ten

by Shamini Flint

  Mum is short, plump (although not, according to Amamma, when she was younger and looking for an Indian husband) and has fluffy, wispy hair. She looks like a mother – overweight enough to be cuddly, messy in a frumpy sort of way and always with a worried look on her face as if she’s trying to remember whether she switched off the gas after cooking or fed the neighbour’s cat for them.

  She only wears friendly colours like light pink and light blue. Her hair is windblown even on days when there is no wind because she runs her fingers through it when she is exasperated.

  Mum runs her fingers through her hair and decides to argue with Amamma. She should really know better. She says, ‘Well, they may be thin – but they are fair! Why should you be worried?’

  Amamma always has the last word on any subject. She spits, ‘They are not fair, they are white!’

  She makes it sound like, a nasty sort of skin condition – scabies or eczema.

  Rajiv finally swallows his peanut butter sandwich. I wonder for a split second if he is going to quarrel with Amamma. But Rajiv knows better. He doesn’t pick fights unless he knows he can win.

  That’s why he picks them with me.

  ‘I bet I’d have scored that penalty,’ he says.

  This is too much.

  ‘You don’t even play football,’ I sneer.

  That annoys him. I know because when he is annoyed his nose turns white around the nostrils and the tip glows pink.

  ‘Neither do you! Anyway, I don’t play football because I choose not to play football. I prefer hockey.’

  ‘Stupid game,’ I mutter. ‘Who needs a stick if you have feet?’

  ‘Not as stupid as football. Especially the way Brazil play it. Last time it was the semis, this time the quarters – next time they probably won’t even qualify. What are you going to do then?’

  It’s true what he says. I remember all too clearly. Italy’s hat-trick, scored by that nobody, Paolo Rossi, against Brazil in the semifinal of the last World Cup. That time it was defensive frailties that cost us, Brazil, I mean, the game. This time we just sucked at penalties. Who could have imagined that Sócrates and Zico would both miss penalties? Platini too. But his miss will be forgotten because it didn’t cost France the game.

  ‘Your Zico will never win a World Cup now!’

  I look at Rajiv numbly. It is true, of course. Zico, the best player at this World Cup and the last, will never win a World Cup. The dream is over. Even if I manage to marry him, the poor fellow will be a train wreck.

  Rajiv knows he has really upset me. His nose turns entirely white. This indicates regret. He would never admit it – but I know how to read that nose.

  Amamma says, ‘I don’t know why all those grown men are chasing one ball. Why doesn’t someone buy them one each?’

  Mum is so short that she can’t see over the steering wheel when she’s driving us to school. We have an old square silver Volvo, which Mum says will do very well for her coffin someday. I think she is joking but I can’t be sure. Mum peers through the gap between the steering wheel and the middle bit with the horn. She swerves as a motorbike appears out of nowhere (for her). I saw the silly fellow with his unbuckled helmet coming up on the inside lane ages ago. I am ten and I am already taller than Mum.

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘Sorry, honey. I didn’t see him.’

  She hunches forward and her neck retracts slightly like a fearful tortoise.

  Rajiv says, ‘You should just let me drive, Mum.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Rajiv. You’re far too young. It will be years before you get your licence.’

  I am with Rajiv on this. He is very good at mechanical things. He can use power tools and hang pictures and fix the washing machine when it breaks. He may be too young to drive but there is no doubt in my mind he would do a better job than Mum. At least he would be able to see the road.

  Mum swerves again. Maybe she’s right and this Volvo is going to be our coffin.

  She almost takes out an entire family on a motorbike, the father wearing his jacket back to front, the mother with one arm around his waist and the other clutching a baby to her side and a three-year-old standing on the platform of the little Vespa penned in by her father’s outstretched hands. Only the parents are wearing helmets. The little girl’s hair is streaming behind her in the wind. She’s having fun.

  Mum mutters something about irresponsible parents. It’s true that what they are doing is not safe but I feel sorry for the family on the motorbike. The dad must be a fisherman from one of the villages further up the coast. It’s the monsoon now. They don’t make much money this time of the year when the seas are too rough to go out fishing. There’s no way he could afford a car. There are hardly any buses. Besides, the buses are almost as dangerous as the motorbikes – hurtling down the narrow, windy streets, jam-packed with passengers so that there isn’t even standing room and the conductor is leaning out the door.

  The only alternative transport is a rickshaw. And pedal power has never been the quickest way of getting about. I’m not sure they could get that whole family into a rickshaw anyway. And if they did it might be too heavy for the rickshaw driver. Usually, the rickshaws are powered by the oldest Chinese people you ever saw, with wrinkly skin and lucky moles sprouting tufts of hair on their chins.

  Mum drops Rajiv off first and then we go further into town to my school. We both attend schools that were originally Catholic missions, so mine is a girls school and Rajiv’s only has boys.

  I desperately wish there were boys in my school. Even Rajiv would do. It’s not that I like boys or anything. I don’t know that many and, if Rajiv is anything to go by, I don’t need to know more.

  I’m not like those girls in my school, especially in some of the older classes, who spend an awful lot of time talking about boys they’ve met from the other schools and which ones are so cute.

  I wish there were boys in school because if there were boys in school, there would be football at school. Rajiv has football coaching and he says the other boys schools have it too. I’d put up with the boys for the football.

  Did I mention that I have never, ever kicked a football (except in my head)? I can imagine myself dribbling past defenders and doing step-overs and back-heels. But I can’t play in real life. That’s because my school only teaches the girls to play netball and field hockey.

  Netball! Easily the dumbest game ever invented and that’s including cricket. In netball when you get the ball, you stop running. How stupid is that? And, depending on which position you play you’re not allowed to leave certain parts of the court. There are lines you’re not supposed to cross. Can you imagine it? You’re running into position, someone passes you the ball and you stop. Or you’re running and you reach some line on the field and you stop.

  I play netball very badly. And I’m not ashamed of it. It would be an embarrassment to be good at something so ridiculous.

  Mum has gotten me to the school gates without hitting anything. I get out and wave goodbye quickly. I’m late because of the argument with Amamma over breakfast.

  The first lesson is English. Sister Pauline doesn’t like anyone to be late. She says ‘God loves punctuality’.

  I’ve noticed that God always seems to love whatever it is that a pupil has failed to do – or be.

  I walk through the big swing doors into the airy classroom. Sister Pauline is standing at the front holding a piece of chalk like she is wielding a lightsaber. She is a nun and wearing her white habit. Dad calls it dressing like a penguin. Mum says Dad should have more respect for religion.

  I hear Sister Pauline tell Sok Mun that ‘God loves homework’.

  Sok Mun’s dad runs a hawker stall at the market selling cut fruit and she helps out every day so sometimes she’s too tired or doesn’t have any time to do her homework. Dad says it’s child labour and he has a good mind to report it. He’s been saying that for two years now but he hasn’t done it yet. I guess he knows that Sok Mun’s dad only asks for her help bec
ause he really needs it. You don’t make much money selling cut fruit (I know this because Mum buys some from him when we go to the market and she only ever gives him coins). He works at the stall for really long hours. If Sok Mun didn’t help him the family probably wouldn’t have enough to eat.

  If I’m on time for school, I let Sok Mun copy my homework. Today I’m too late.

  I am still useful to Sok Mun though – as a distraction.

  Sister Pauline forgets about her and turns to me.

  She says, ‘God loves punctuality, Maya.’

  I say, ‘Yes, Sister Pauline,’ in my most goodest voice, the one Rajiv says makes him want to puke and would dissuade the fiercest referee from handing out a red card – even for a blatant handball in the penalty box.

  It works.

  Sister Pauline says, ‘Well, don’t do it again,’ but there is no standing on the chair or on the table or in the corner or holding my ears and doing squats or writing lines on the blackboard about what God loves (Sister Pauline must believe that God loves lines).

  Another girl walks in late and my heart sinks.

  It is Batumalar.

  I’ve barely had a good day at school since she joined the class a few weeks ago.

  ‘Late again, Batumalar?’ asks Sister Pauline.

  Batumalar murmurs something – maybe it’s an excuse or an explanation – but no one can hear what it is. It wouldn’t matter anyway.

  ‘In the corner. I want fifty squats.’

  The whole class gasps. That’s the most any girl has ever had to do.

  ‘That will teach Batumalar not to be Batu Malas,’ says Sister Pauline and there are titters from the class.

  It’s really not funny at all. ‘Batu Malas’ means ‘Lazy Stone’ in Malay. We do all our lessons, except English, in the Malay language. This is hard, because not all the kids speak any Malay when they start school – I didn’t. It took ages to work out what was going on.

  Batumalar walks to the corner. She crosses her hands so that she is holding opposite ears and starts squatting and standing, squatting and standing.

  Some of the girls look away and others stare.

  I don’t know which is worse. To look worsens her shame – I’d bet my collection of Enid Blyton books that Zico wished the stadium was empty when he missed that penalty. But to look away abandons her – maybe Zico would have felt better if he had known that in a small town in Malaysia, there was a ten-year-old girl making excuses for his penalty miss.

  Batumalar is the only other Indian in the class. I should explain, I guess, that there are lots of different races in Malaysia – mostly Malays and Chinese but a few Indians too.

  Mum is from one of the oldest Indian families in town – just about all the other Indians are relatives of ours and an aunt of mine was head girl of the school a few years back.

  Besides, Dad is white.

  It annoys Amamma because she is very particular about bloodlines. But the kids think it’s cool. That’s because they don’t know any real-life, white people. They assume they must all be like Superman or Batman, which, if you knew my dad, you would realise was really funny – his tummy hangs over his trousers, he wears thick glasses and he smokes like a chimney.

  Batumalar is an Indian from one of the estates – the rubber plantations – outside town. Her dad taps rubber. That’s what you call it when your job is to cut a thin strip of bark off the rubber tree and collect the sap that drips into a cup from time to time.

  For some reason, he has sent his daughter, Batumalar, to this convent school. Most of the other tapper children go to the Tamil school on the estate. Tamil is the language that a lot of Indians in Malaysia speak. Mum speaks it.

  I do a bit as well, sort of, but we speak English at home because otherwise Dad wouldn’t have a clue what we were talking about.

  I asked Mum why Batumalar doesn’t go to the estate school and she said maybe Batumalar’s dad wants something better for his daughter. The school I go to is considered pretty good even if it does have Sister Pauline.

  Batumalar is often late because her dad has to bring her all the way from the estate on his motorbike every morning. She told me once that it took an hour and fifteen minutes each way.

  I wonder whether she has ever told her dad that she gets bullied at school, even by some of the teachers – that they call her Batu Malas and make her do more squats than anyone else.

  I guess not.

  Her dad would have taken her out of the school if he knew, I was sure of that. Probably she didn’t want him to be disappointed that all his effort getting her into a good school was for nothing.

  It’s really hard being a ‘minority’. Being a minority means you’re different from the other people around you – like Batumalar and I, the only Indians in the class.

  I know that it’s tough to be a minority because when I was six years old, Dad told me so. I had kind of guessed that by then too.

  Dad was working on a project for the VSO (that’s where English people come out to other countries to help them with stuff – like teaching English in schools and building drains).

  I was sent to the nearest village school.

  On my first day of school ever, I was really excited.

  By the third lesson I was in terrible trouble.

  Puan Sharifah, my teacher, told me to go and sit in an empty classroom – by myself.

  I sat there for ages wondering what I had done wrong.

  I was too embarrassed to tell Mum that I’d been punished on my first day of school. Besides, she was bound to ask me what I had done wrong and I hadn’t a clue.

  On the second day of school, I was sent to the empty classroom again. I was really upset this time because I’d been as quiet as a mouse to avoid doing whatever it was that got me punished the first day.

  I sat there for a while in that big, empty classroom and then I decided that school was not for me.

  So I snuck out and walked home.

  It was a three-kilometre walk. I was six years old and Mum says that to this day nothing has ever given her as much of a shock as seeing me walk in the front gate sobbing. (I wouldn’t normally cry but I’d been walking for ages and my feet hurt and the whole way I’d been wondering what I could have done that was so bad that I’d been sent out of the class two days in a row.)

  I swear that, just for a moment, when I walked in, Mum was as white as Dad.

  Mum took me back to school, of course.

  She was really upset that I was being punished and nobody had even bothered to tell me what I’d done and that I’d walked all the way home and could have got lost or run over or kidnapped.

  It was really odd when we got back to school because a whole bunch of teachers was standing by the gates looking worried. When we turned up, Puan Sharifah hugged me and burst into tears and then everyone apologised at once.

  Mum asked, ‘But why did you punish Maya?’

  ‘Punish her?’ Puan Sharifah looked puzzled. She still had her arm around my shoulder.

  ‘Yes, and on the first two days of school!’

  ‘But I didn’t punish her.’

  I pulled away from her and yelled, ‘Yes, you did! You sent me out of class. Yesterday and today. And I didn’t do anything. Really I didn’t.’

  Puan Sharifah stared at me as if I’d gone mad.

  Then she started to laugh and Mum and I stared at her as if she’d gone mad.

  Mum said in her stiffest imitation-white-people’s voice (she’d picked it up from Dad), ‘This is no laughing matter.’

  Puan Sharifah wiped her eyes and said, ‘You are right. But she was not punished. She was asked to wait in another class because it was the Islamic Studies lesson and she is the only non-Muslim in the class.’

  Mum was trying to stay angry. She said, ‘You should have explained.’

  Puan Sharifah nodded. She turned to me and said, ‘I’m sorry, Maya. You’re the only Indian and the only non-Muslim in the class, you see.’

  I didn’t se
e. Not until bedtime that night when Mum explained that, in Malaysia, there were so many religions that kids were only taught their own so as not to offend anyone. It just so happened that at my new school all the kids were Malay Muslims – except me.

  ‘But what religion are we, Mum?’

  Mum said, ‘Well, I was brought up a Hindu.’

  And Dad said, ‘I have no time for this religious nonsense.’

  ‘But why didn’t they have a class for me about being a Hindu or something?’

  Dad said, ‘Not enough kids in the class for them to pay a teacher. You were in a minority of one.’

  Now I’m in a minority of two.

  Me and Batumalar.

  The only two Indians in the class and one of us is getting picked on and the other one of us is too terrified of being picked on to do anything about it.

  Dad’s right.

  It’s tough being a minority.

  I’ve decided I’m going to be a professional footballer when I grow up.

  I feel the hand of God on my shoulder.

  All right – I don’t really.

  But Diego Maradona has just scored two goals that I’ll never forget in Argentina’s World Cup quarterfinal against England. He is an amazing player. Not as good as Zico, of course. Actually, the truth is he might be better but I’m never going to admit it to anyone.

  Maradona is short and stocky and cries a lot. Dad says all South Americans are like that.

  The first goal – he jumps with Peter Shilton and manages to get the ball over his head and into the net.

  Peter Shilton must be the best goalkeeper in the tournament.

  ‘How did a runt like Maradona beat him in the air?’ Dad wants to know.

  The replays make it clear – Maradona used his hand.

  Later, Maradona explains that he scored, ‘A bit with the head of Maradona and another bit with the hand of God.’