by Nick Earls
That, it turns out, is the worst aspect of it for me. I know a bit about solids, liquids and gases, but the worksheet feels as if it’s written in a foreign language. Question four is a Venn diagram. I’m supposed to show what I know, but all it has is three overlapping circles with ‘solids’, ‘liquids’ and ‘gases’ written in them. What kind of thing am I supposed to write? Am I supposed to give examples? It feels as if part of the question is missing, and it’s the important part that would tell me what to do.
So I just stare at it thinking this isn’t how we did it in South Africa. I thought fitting in here would be all about the Aussie words, so I worked hard to learn them. But it turns out it’s about everything.
Around the room, everyone else is working, answering questions. This is normal for them. Completely normal. It’s as if I’m on my own island, somehow separate from the rest of them, even though they’re sitting all around me. Max is writing notes all over the sheet. Harry is ruling lines. Ben is thinking, but it looks like real calm thinking and not blind staring panic. Beyond him, even Lachlan Parkes is tapping his pencil on his desk and working out an answer.
Max is definitely a nerd, but he’s not a bad guy. I’m pretty lucky Ms Vo picked him to show me around. I’m sure we had people like him in the class in Bergvliet, even if I was more with the hockey players then. He’s not Richard Frost. But Richard was never good at returning my skidder at handball, even if he was a great left wing at hockey. And Richard doesn’t have a quad bike.
In the end I make some notes on the worksheet. I don’t know if they’re anything close to right. Is dry ice where the circles for solids and gases overlap, since there’s no liquid phase? We had some of it at Bergvliet once, for Science. We even had liquid nitrogen and we froze things solid and smashed them. I wonder if they’ve done that here. It was fun. It’d certainly make the subject of solids, liquids and gases a lot more interesting.
‘Don’t they give you homework at that school?’ Mom calls out from inside. ‘Come in so we can skype your pa and then you can do some before dinner.’
My hockey stick came with us on the plane, ready for me to use right away. The grass at the front is too long, but not much too long, so I’ve been dribbling across it, imaging oncoming defenders, stick checks, shots at goal. I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been out there. I’ve had my mind on the ball, only the ball, not Max or Richard or Venn diagrams or home.
When I go into the kitchen Mom’s staring at her phone.
‘Do you not have plates at school?’ she says, frowning. ‘I just got this email. It’s from the P and C – the parents’ organisation. They’re having a fashion parade at lunchtime on Thursday. It’s a fundraiser. I bought a ticket, but the invitation says to bring a plate. Do they have plates there, or . . .’
‘I haven’t seen any.’ I really haven’t. Maybe they don’t have plates. ‘Either people have lunchboxes or, if you buy from the tuckshop, you get it in a paper bag or maybe on a paper plate, but not a real one.’
‘No plates.’ She shakes her head. ‘I wonder what kind of plate I’m supposed to bring. A dinner plate, probably. There’ll be a meal. What if they serve soup? I’d need a bowl for that. Eish! Do I take a bowl too?’ She takes a step back and throws her hands in the air. ‘This place takes a bit of getting used to.’
I want to tell her that she has it easy, that she doesn’t have a classroom to deal with – in fact a whole school and everyone who goes there – but if I start talking about it I won’t stop. It’s better if I just go and get Hansie. On the way to his room, I notice that the house smells a bit like Mom’s cooking now, and a week ago it didn’t.
Hansie is lying on his blow-up travel bed, facing the wall and holding his favourite bear. His thumb is in his mouth, but his eyes are wide open. We’re all stuck getting used to this, each in our own way.
‘Time to talk to Dad,’ I tell him.
He looks at me and blinks.
‘Time to engage the superhero power of speech. Do you think you can do that?’
He doesn’t move.
‘I think you might need to fly.’
I rush forward and pick him up with both arms. That at least gets a snotty laugh. I carry him, flying superhero-style, all the way to the kitchen. He makes an Iron Man landing, one foot at a time, complete with powering-down sounds.
Mom has already got through to Dad on Skype, and the first thing I hear him say is, ‘What about knives and forks? Do you have to bring them as well as the plate?’
‘Not mentioned,’ Mom tells him, and shrugs. ‘Look who’s here.’ She smiles and moves aside so that all three of us can fit in front of the camera. ‘Is it Superman today or Iron Man?’
‘Iron Man,’ Hansie says before blasting her with his imaginary repulsors.
She moves a stool in front of the laptop so that he can kneel on it.
‘Boys, howzit,’ Dad says. ‘It’s good to see your faces.’ He’s in his donga again, though the wall behind him is one I haven’t seen before. ‘So, Josie, this plate. If they didn’t say to bring a knife and fork, maybe just stick to the plate. Could be a safety thing. You know how crazy they are about safety here. Like everyone needing to wear their seatbelts. I know it’s the law at home too, but they seem to be real sticklers for it here. For any rules. It’s all rules here, and I bet they’ve got rules about cutlery too.’
‘Seatbelts are a good idea,’ Mom says. ‘They save lives. There’s nothing to be gained by being macho and not wearing one.’
Dad nods. ‘Well, yes . . .’
‘It’s a different country,’ she says. ‘That’s why we’re here, remember?’
On Wednesday night, with my first school week past halfway, we go for dinner at a nearby Thai place called Thai-Ryffic. We haven’t seen much of Brisbane yet, but I’ve noticed three Thai restaurants and every one had a name that involved a bad pun on the word ‘Thai’.
When we walk in Mom looks pleased. ‘Crowded. That’s a good sign,’ she says.
Most of the tables we can see are full, and there are more around the corner, beyond a big wooden elephant and some pot plants. The place is noisy with conversation and the excellent food smells make my stomach rumble.
We find a table and Mom hands me a menu. Hansie kneels on the floor, driving his Lightning McQueen over the black-and-white tiles. At first, the menu looks a lot like one from home, but then I notice something I’m not expecting. I point to it on Mom’s.
‘Hmmm,’ she says. ‘Does it really . . .’
She lifts the menu up to take a closer look. Yes, it does. It says ‘kaffir lime leaves’. She shakes her head and takes a breath, in and out.
Mom looks around for a staff member, but they’re all out the back. So she walks to the counter and rings the bell, once, twice, and then keeps ringing it until someone pushes through the double doors in a hurry. It’s a young white guy with a goatee.
‘Sorry, is –’ he says, looking at Mom and then past her to see what the emergency is. He’s wiping his hands on a towel.
‘This!’ She talks over him. She holds up the menu. ‘This word.’ She jabs her finger at the page. ‘What kind of racist place is this? Don’t you have any coloured people here? It’s Thai food. What are you doing using the’ – she drops her voice – ‘k-word?’
‘I’m sorry, I . . .’ The man looks at Mom, looks over at me.
I’m not going to save him. He’s got a racist word on his menu. I can’t believe that no one else here has complained. He keeps wringing his hands in the towel.
‘I didn’t say anything.’ He glances nervously at the nearby tables. People are starting to turn our way. ‘I just got out here.’
‘Look at your menu.’ Mom points again.
‘Ah, yes, kaffir lime leaves.’ Mum flinches when he says it. ‘We use them in some of the curries.’ He folds the towel and sets it on the counter. ‘It’s traditional. It’s a Thai thing.’
‘But the word. The k-word.’ He’s not getting it, so Mom’s gett
ing louder. ‘It’s totally racist.’
With that, conversation in the room goes quiet. But it’s strange. People are looking at Mom like she’s the one doing something wrong.
‘It’s like the n-word,’ Mom says. ‘Would you put that in a menu? I don’t think so.’
‘The n-word? Naffir?’ The man looks twitchy. He glances again at the other diners. ‘I don’t think that’s a . . . No, they’re kaffir limes leaves, definitely.’
Mom shakes her head. She’s not going to back down. I can tell. Everyone is staring, but I know why she has to do it.
‘It’s okay,’ says a woman on the table next to us. ‘They’re just lime leaves, a kind of lime leaves.’
The man at the counter fakes a smile. ‘Darren – that’s our chef – he trained at Chang Mai. With actual Thai people. He’s very spiritual. Practically a Buddhist. He’s not a racist.’
Hansie looks up at me from knee height. ‘Why is Mom angry?’
‘She’s not angry.’ I glance her way. ‘She just . . . saw something that needed fixing. Something that wasn’t quite right. Sometimes people need to be helped to make the right choice.’
He looks blankly at me, and drives Lightning McQueen up my ankle.
‘You can call it makrut lime or maybe k-lime,’ my mother tells him, ‘but you really need to change that. Or get your Darren to talk to his actual Thai people and start using their word for it. That would be respectful, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he says, very seriously, nodding. ‘Yes, it would.’
Hansie drives Lightning McQueen over my foot, making louder engine noises to cope with challenging terrain.
‘Well, we shall order now,’ Mom says, making it sound like a declaration. Maybe it is one, letting the people in the room know they can get back to their meals. ‘And you and Darren can work on sorting this out.’
She turns towards the diners and nods reassuringly. Problem solved. The woman on the table next to us smiles back nervously. Most pretend they were busy with something else all along.
The man, whose name we never hear, seems glad to pick up his pad and pen. He takes our order, and runs back into the kitchen as soon as possible.
‘I miss Jonah,’ Hansie says. Jonah is a big Lightning McQueen fan, back in Cape Town. They fought all the time about who got to play with the car. ‘And Georgia and Lily and Auntie Val.’
Lightning McQueen drives most of the way up my leg, screeching as he takes the hairpin bend at my knee. I pull Hansie up and carry him to the wooden elephant.
‘Your teeth don’t miss Auntie Val,’ I tell him. She was forever giving Hansie entire tubes of wine gums when Mom wasn’t looking. ‘I miss people too. But there are good people here as well. It’ll be okay.’
And then it hits me. No one here has a clue why Mom’s upset. No one knows that the k-word is the most racist word ever. They all think my mom’s gone bossies.
At the counter, Mom has found a black felt-tip pen and she’s going through the pile of takeaway menus putting a fat line over ‘affir’ every time kaffir lime leaves appear.
When Mom turns up for the fashion parade at lunchtime the next day, she brings her plate. I meet her at the gate, since she doesn’t know where anything is. I’m even going to go along to the parade with her. If we’d had one in Bergvliet, I would have been nowhere near the building, but she would have been backstage keeping everything in order. She would have been in charge then. Here she might go rogue with a pen if there are menus mentioning a certain kind of lime leaf.
I can’t guess what the next issue will be, but I know I don’t want it to be here. I have to make this school work for me five days a week. I have to be normal here as soon as I can, and for that I need normal parents.
She’s holding her plate in both hands, looking past me, trying to work the school out.
‘I would have had signs,’ she says. ‘For new people.’
Halfway to the hall with its cactus fan, Max sees us and comes over. As always, his hat’s pulled down hard and his hair’s bursting out from under it.
‘Fashion parade,’ he says, nodding, working out why she’s here. Then he looks at her hands. ‘What are you . . . ? What’s the plate for?’
Mom turns the plate over, as if it might not be one if you look at it from the other side. ‘They said to bring one.’
‘Are you sure? I thought they’d have . . .’ He stops. He stares at the plate. ‘Did they say, “Bring a plate”?’
‘Exactly that.’ Mom shrugs her shoulders. ‘So here’s my plate. Where do you think I should take it?’
Max looks at me as if I should know something. ‘Um, I think people are taking them to the catering area at the back of the hall . . .’ He points vaguely into the distance. ‘But you don’t have to. You really don’t have to. You could just go into the main area and say nothing. That’d be cool. Nothing at all. Just bring the plate in and then’ – he moves his hands around, like someone weighing up options and settling on a good one – ‘take it home. That’d be good.’
‘Well . . .’ It’s not the answer Mom was expecting. ‘Would it? Thanks for your input Max, but I think I have to show them I’ve got the plate. It was on the invitation. “Gold coin donation” and “bring a plate”.’
‘Sure. But I heard they’ve got loads of plates already.’ We’re closing in on the hall and Max is talking faster and faster. ‘Too many probably. They were going to send out another email telling people. They’ve got so many plates it could get really confusing.’
I hold up my hand to stop him. We’re at the doors. ‘Max, they told Mom to bring a plate. We want to fit in here. So she’s brought a plate.’
Mom pushes the door open with her plate-free hand and Max follows us in. There’s a long steel-topped counter with people on both sides of it, unwrapping food. In the same moment, I notice two things.
Number one: the food that’s being unwrapped is all on plates. Plates of all different kinds. Plates brought from home. Plates piled high with food. ‘Bring a plate’ isn’t about the plate at all. It means bring food. Nightmare. Total nightmare. Right in the middle of school. Mom watches the cling film being peeled from the plates, her teeth clenched.
Number two: Mr Browning is coming towards us with a beaming smile, reaching out to shake Mom’s hand. Which is holding a perfectly clean definitely unused plate that has without doubt brought no food at all.
‘Hello,’ he says, as Mom takes her right hand from the plate to shake his. ‘It’s great to see you here. How are you all . . .’ That’s when he notices the empty plate Mom is now trying to hide behind her back. ‘. . . fitting in?’
Awfully, I want to say to him. As badly as you could possibly imagine. Right now, I would be fitting in better if I had blue hair, a reptilian tail and jet boots.
‘Mostly good,’ Mom says, glancing around for anything else to talk about. ‘We have our ups and downs.’
He’s still staring around Mom’s side at the plate. He’s definitely moved from looking to staring now. He leans in a little closer.
‘If you need food,’ he says, almost in a whisper, ‘we can sort that out. You’re part of a community when you’re at this school.’
Oh no. It’s worse. It’s got worse. I’m an alien with blue hair, a reptilian tail and jet boots, and I only talk in high-pitched farts through a flap in my pants. And my mom is something far worse that I can’t even imagine.
‘Oh, no, no.’ She lets out a nervous laugh as I check to see how many people are onto us. She hugs the plate to her chest, with her arms folded across it. ‘I just . . . found this plate. Outside. And it’s a good plate. New. I thought it might be useful. Might have gone astray from in here, so . . . And that community thing, I like that. We have far too much food. Far too much food at our house. I’m always cooking far too much, right, Herschelle?’ I’m only expected to nod, not speak. ‘So let us know any time we can help out.’
Max is staring down at the floor, as if someone’s scratched some amazing secr
et into the floorboards just in front of his toes. Mr Browning’s stuck leaning slightly forward, like someone straining to hear something quiet that actually makes sense, instead of Mom’s mildly crazy ramble. She’s nodding, putting on a look that says they’ve come to some kind of understanding about banding together to do good work for people who need it.
‘Good,’ he says slowly. ‘Good.’
Nothing’s good, not for any of us, but he knows how to do a calm voice.
‘I’m sure you’re very busy,’ Mom says, in a fake happy voice. ‘I’m looking forward to the fashion parade.’
‘Yes.’ He looks towards the stage, where nothing is happening. ‘Oh, yes, we all are. Well . . .’ He takes a step back. ‘I’m very glad you could make it.’ He raises one arm in the direction of the stage, where someone has just arrived with a broom. ‘Enjoy.’
The three of us watch him take another step, half turn and immediately find himself in two new conversations. That are probably totally sane.
‘Eish,’ Mom says. ‘I feel like such a moegoe.’
‘Moo . . .’ Max starts to say, and then stops and nods. No translation necessary. Moegoe equals idiot.
‘That’s the last thing you need your mom doing, eh,’ she says to me, ‘when you’ve got yourself so ready to fit right in here.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Max says. I think it’s to me, but it could be to Mom, or both of us. He’s still too embarrassed to make eye contact. ‘My mum does ridiculous things all the time. On purpose. She does roller derby and one time they raised money for the school. She roller skated into assembly in her roller derby gear to hand over the cheque. Warpaint on and everything. Her name’s Michelle, but her roller derby name’s Bomb Shelle and that was on her back. I try to make sure she doesn’t get notices about school events now.’
‘Roller derby gear?’ Mom smiles. ‘I’ll make a note never to do that. You’re a good guy, Max. Bring a plate, eh?’ She holds it up and waves it around. ‘Bring a plate.’ She shakes her head. ‘We’re going to take this country one crazy phrase at a time, Hersch, just you watch.’