New Boy

by Nick Earls

  It would have happened in the night, almost for certain. The guard would have passed on his rounds, and whoever did it would have dragged the bin up to the gate, poured petrol in and set it alight.

  ‘Anyone get robbed?’ I want the answer to be no. I want all my neighbours to be safe.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says.

  I can picture it, smell it – the petrol and rubbish and plastic all burning. I wonder if I’ll ever forget the feeling of waiting for the guard to come back, knowing that the rest of the neighbourhood isn’t covered. Knowing that our neighbours in their houses are feeling it too. Waiting, because on some nights the fire in the bin is just the start.

  The sliding doors are behind me. The curtains are open, so they’re black on either side of my head in the image in the bottom right corner of the screen. I turn around to check them before I can stop myself.

  ‘There’s nothing there,’ Richard says. ‘It’s okay.’

  For the first time since my first day, I go to school in a good mood. Maybe I’m ready for Australia now, and it’s ready for me.

  The mood lasts about ten minutes before Lachlan Parkes comes up to me.

  ‘I’m about to go to the toilet,’ he says. ‘I might see if I can push some lunch out for you.’

  He puts one hand behind his pants and pretends to strain. He and his dumb friends laugh as they walk away.

  ‘What?’ I don’t get it.

  ‘Word is you eat poo sausage,’ he says over his shoulder.

  Poo sausage. It’s like a slap. That wasn’t for here, for school. There’s only one person it can have come from. I want to be wrong, and I want to prove it.

  Max is tying a shoelace when I find him sitting on a bench underneath our classroom.

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ I tell him.

  ‘Sure.’ He goes to smile, but it doesn’t quite work. I think he knows what I’m here to say.

  So I’m not wrong. And that’s a sickening thought.

  ‘Poo sausage. Someone told Lachlan Parkes about boerewors and called it poo sausage.’

  ‘Um, yeah. But it was funny.’ Max slides his feet back on the concrete. The lace is still untied.

  ‘Not the way he talked about it.’

  ‘But I said lots of good things.’ He starts to frown. ‘I said it like I did yesterday, as a joke. Lachlan made me tell him what happened.’ He’s talking quickly, breathing quickly. ‘I had to tell him stuff.’

  ‘So he could then use it against me? Why else would he ask you that stuff? You think he likes South Africa? You think he’s interested? Lachlan Parkes? He was always going to say something stupid.’ My best day in Australia is spoiled. ‘Surely you know that he’d –’

  Max talks over me. ‘I had to tell him.’ He looks smaller than usual, scrunched down on the seat. He glances down at his feet.

  ‘Really? Had to?’

  He doesn’t say anything more.

  The siren goes for us to head upstairs.

  I wonder what else he’s said, and who he’s said it to, and why. Max seemed totally impressed with the food yesterday and now, instead of telling everyone how good it was, he’s turned up to school with his ‘poo sausage’ line ready to go.

  A girl steps between us, heading for the stairs. I turn and follow her.

  For the rest of the day, I can’t keep ‘poo sausage’ out of my head.

  At the start of lunchtime, I decide to go to the library and speak as little as possible. But on the way there, Lachlan walks past, holding a sandwich near the back of his pants and saying in his stupid version of a South African accent, ‘Let me know if you’re hungry, Hershie, and I’ll make you a snack.’

  I don’t know where Max is, and I don’t care.

  On Tuesday it gets worse. I turn up to school ready for it, maybe even looking for it.

  At the first break, I come out of the toilet and Lachlan Parkes and his friends Josh and Ethan are right outside.

  ‘Just having something to eat, were you?’ he says. It’s yesterday’s dumb joke, back again. I move to step past him, but he blocks my way and says, ‘Not going to answer me? Not going to say anything, Hershey Fondee Murphy?’

  It takes me a second or two to realise it’s my name, in that joke accent. Then Ethan repeats it and laughs. They start chanting it, ‘Hershey Hershey Fondee Murphy.’ They move in around me and start nudging me, still chanting. First just the three of them, then four, then five. People I don’t even know start doing it.

  I must step back because I bump into the wall. They take a step closer.

  Then I notice Max is nearby, just beyond them, looking at me, saying nothing. Lachlan sees him too.

  ‘Come on, Max,’ he says. He walks over and gets behind him, putting a hand in Max’s back, shoving him towards me. ‘You know you want to.’

  ‘No, I . . .’ Max moves, stumbles.

  One of Lachlan’s friends bumps into him. Max looks small among them. He’s frowning and his lips look pale.

  Lachlan jabs him in the ribs. ‘Say it, Maxie.’

  I see Max’s lips move. ‘Hershey Hershey Fondee Murphy.’

  I want it to stop. I shout, ‘Voertsek!’ and then realise how Afrikaans it sounds and probably is.

  ‘Fart sick,’ Lachlan says, and his friends laugh.

  Nothing is right, nothing I can say, and Max isn’t helping me. He’s one of them. He told Lachlan the ‘poo sausage’ stuff and now he’s next to him, playing his game and making me feel like an idiot.

  It all gets jammed in my head, and I have to get out.

  I shove Lachlan hard.

  He trips and falls over. He hits the ground with a thump and rolls onto his side. Everyone goes quiet and steps back.

  Lachlan gets up, wiping gravel from his hands. He runs at me, swinging a wild punch. I swerve and punch him in the stomach as his fist swings at the air. As he staggers sideways, Josh and Ethan rush forward and tackle me.

  I hit the ground face first and their fists are thumping into my back when I hear a teacher’s voice, shouting.

  I have dust all over my shirtfront and my knees are bleeding. I’m being marched to the principal’s office. I was the one who turned it physical so I don’t know how it’ll go. I snapped. I can’t even explain it. I felt boxed in there, I suppose. Surrounded. I can’t even remember it properly. Some bits of it are in slow motion, some bits are gone. When I hit the ground, I heard the sound of my body landing on concrete, but I didn’t feel a thing.

  Four-and-a-half years at Bergvliet Primary and I never got into a fight. I can’t see that counting for anything now. I come here and start a fight in my second week. They might tell me to leave. I don’t know where you go then. My mother’s going to hear about this. I know she is. She’ll go nuts. She won’t get it at all. I don’t get it myself.

  ‘We came here to get away from violence!’ That’s what she’ll say and she won’t just say it once.

  The teacher, who never tells us his name, makes us wait outside while he talks to Mr Browning. There are five of us here. I don’t know where the rest of the group went. Max stares at the opposite wall and looks like he’s trying not to cry. Lachlan Parkes sits with a stupid grin on his face, trying to catch the eye of his friends. He’s still trying to look like the boss, like a winner. There’s blood and dirt on my legs all the way to my socks. Ethan’s lost a shoe. There’s blood on both of Lachlan’s hands. He wipes them on each other and squeezes his fingers. He picks some gravel out of his palm and drops it on the floor.

  It’s been a while since I’ve seen blood like that, smeared across skin from wounds.

  The last time was before we left. On the skollie who tried to break into our house in Cape Town. I feel sick remembering.

  It was the screaming that woke me. There was a boy stuck on the barbed wire on the top of the wall outside my window. He had climbed up to escape Henry, the guard. I was scared. The boy was too, I’m sure, but I didn’t think of that then. Up on the wall, he was almost eye level with me. The
wire was caught in one leg and one arm. He dropped his machete and it hit the pavers with a clang. He screamed as the barbs cut him and then as Henry swung his sjambok and beat the leg that was still hanging down.

  The boy tried to lift his leg, but Henry kept hitting and, in the narrow space, the sjambok clattered and scraped against the side of the house with the backswing.

  Police came and took the boy away. I don’t know if his leg healed. I heard later that he was fifteen.

  I jump as the siren goes, signalling the start of the next lesson for everyone but us.

  After the court case, the boy was sent away somewhere. I wanted to know more, but Dad said we had to stop talking about it and move on.

  The door opens.

  Mr Browning looks grim when he says, ‘Come in, boys.’

  We stand in a semicircle while he leans against the front of his desk, facing us.

  He asks what happened and Lachlan Parkes says, ‘Herschelle pushed me, sir.’

  I’m about to explain, but Mr Browning holds up his hand to stop me. ‘And was it completely unprovoked, Lachlan?’

  Lachlan tries not to smirk and looks down at his feet. ‘We were just talking before then. Just mucking around.’

  Mr Browning asks him what was said, exactly, and Lachlan tells him he can’t remember for sure.

  ‘I’m sure there’s someone here who can remember,’ Mr Browning says. ‘I’m sure Herschelle will remember if no one else does, but I’m giving you boys the chance to tell me first.’

  ‘We were just mucking around with his name, sir,’ Ethan says. ‘Like, making a joke of it, with a bit of an accent.’

  Mr Browning is waiting for more, so Ethan clears his throat and continues. ‘And there was a joke about him coming out of the toilet and eating poo sausage. They have a sausage in South Africa that looks . . . well, it’s a big coil, so . . .’

  Mr Browning nods and then turns to Max. ‘And what about you? I’m very disappointed to see you here as part of this.’

  Max’s lip trembles and he nods. He tries to speak, but he can’t. I can picture it – Lachlan shoving him towards me, Ethan and Josh shouldering him into place.

  ‘Max didn’t want to, sir,’ I tell Mr Browning, ‘but Lachlan made him. They pushed him around.’

  Once he’s heard the details, Mr Browning says to me, ‘It sounds as if there was some bullying last week and then they were crowding around you and intimidating you and that’s when the push happened. And I think that you regret it.’ He pauses, in case anyone is going to disagree. No one does. ‘Now, you should have taken this to Ms Vo before it got to this stage, but you still shouldn’t have been put in that position.’ He turns to face the others. ‘Boys, I’m not sure you realise how serious this is. This is bullying, but it’s also racism.’

  Lachlan’s mouth gapes open. I try to stop mine doing the same. I don’t point out that I’m white, in case that spoils it.

  ‘No, sir, it wasn’t meant to be . . .’ Ethan says. ‘It was just a joke and it’s not like he’s, you know . . . black, or anything. We’re not racists.’

  ‘You have targeted Herschelle because he’s South African,’ Mr Browning says. ‘You have targeted him because of his nationality. Because he sounds different. That’s racism. Is that how we do things in this school?’

  They all shake their heads. Josh bites his lip.

  ‘You should have been making Herschelle welcome.’ He glances at me. ‘Have you heard of the Australian principle of the “fair go”?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I tell him. ‘Well, I’ve read about it. Also “fair suck of the sav”.’ It comes out before I can stop it. It was next to ‘fair go’ on the website.

  ‘Right,’ Mr Browning says. He’s trying not to smile. ‘Good effort. Well, you didn’t get a fair go, and you should have done. We’ll talk more about this later, but if you feel ready to go back to class for now, you can go. You too, Max.’

  The other three are still standing in their spots when the door shuts behind us. All the way back I stare straight ahead, ignoring Max, even though he’s right next to me. He looks straight ahead too. I remember the fear on his face as Lachlan pushed him forward. I want to fix it with him, but then I remember his mouth moving, chanting, and I never want to talk to him again. I don’t get it. I don’t know which Max to believe in.

  When Mr Browning brings the others to the classroom, he takes Ms Vo outside for several minutes. After she comes back in, the rest of the morning seems normal enough. Then the siren goes for lunch, and she tells all five of us to stay behind.

  Mr Browning appears at the door with my mother, Max’s mother and four other parents. Mr Browning leads them through the door, and they stand just inside it, looking awkward. I want that. I want them to feel bad, even if I have no idea if it’ll do any good. Will anything change at all once there are no parents or teachers around?

  Mom makes a move towards me. At first I think she’s got something to say about me starting a fight, but as her arms start to lift I realise she’s coming in for a hug. I raise one hand just enough for her to see me do it, and I shake my head. She stops, mouths, ‘You okay?’ and I give her a small nod before looking away. I can’t be hugged by Mom in front of Lachlan Parkes. How does she not know that?

  A man in a suit, who looks like he must be Lachlan’s father, checks his phone when it pings with a message. He takes a step back towards the verandah before Mr Browning says, politely but clearly, ‘I think that can wait.’

  ‘It’s just a –’ Lachlan’s father starts to say.

  ‘Would it be easier if I looked after your phone while you’re in this meeting?’ Mr Browning holds his hand out.

  Lachlan’s father stops. ‘Ah, no.’ He holds his phone down by his side and then slips it into his pocket.

  ‘Good.’ Mr Browning turns to the other parents. ‘Is everyone else’s phone off?’

  Max’s mother nods quickly, as if she’s in trouble herself.

  Mr Browning talks through what happened. When he mentions racism, Josh’s mom and Ethan’s parents look shocked. Lachlan’s father’s shoulders slump.

  Lachlan is apparently already on something called a behaviour contract, which will now be reviewed. He’s referred to as ‘the ringleader’ more than once. The first time he smirks, but his father glares at him. I think Lachlan needs to work out that being called the leader isn’t always a good thing.

  Again, Max and I are set free first, this time with our mothers.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ mine says, whispering as though we still have to be quiet.

  ‘It only happened this morning.’ I talk normally. I’ve decided I don’t mind who hears. Everyone’s going to find out anyway. And I’m not the racist in this story. Down below, I see quite a few faces turned up towards the verandah, watching to see what’s going on.

  ‘Ya, but there were things along the way. He’s been getting at you since the first day or close to it.’ She looks worried.

  Her worry’s more than that, though. I can tell. It’s fear. She’s got a hint of the look she had when she burst into my room the night of the skollie. The night we become afraid of black boys with knives. The night Mom decided we had to leave.

  ‘It’s not like home,’ I tell her. ‘Look how they’re dealing with it. You should be glad. A few punches and it’s a massive deal here.’ This is not Cape Town. ‘No knives, no sjamboks, just a punch or two and look how it shocks them. That’s what you want. That’s why we’re here. They call that violence and you know and I know that it was nothing.’

  It wasn’t nothing, but she nods.

  And what good would it have done to tell her earlier? We already had Hansie and the snot and the screaming and the tantrums about not going to child care. If two of us had been lying on our backs kicking at the carpet with our heels, the past week or so wouldn’t have been any better. One of us just had to suck it up, and that always has to be the big brother’s job.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Max’s mother says. She’s s
tanding behind him with her hands on his shoulders and she pushes him forward. ‘Max has something to say.’

  She catches Mom’s eye and they both step away, with Max’s mom talking to mine in a whisper that I can’t quite hear. Lachlan Parkes is mentioned.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Max says. ‘I should’ve . . .’ He shrugs and looks at his feet. ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry.’ He looks back at me again. ‘Mum wants to know if you want to come to our place on the weekend for lunch, or something. We could ride the quad bikes.’

  I want to go. I want us to be friends and I want to ride one of his quad bikes. But in that second all I can see is him saying, ‘Hershey Hershey Fondee Murphy’, siding with Lachlan and making me feel like the most alone person in the world.

  ‘Your mom and dad probably don’t know how to cook poo sausage,’ I tell him. ‘I think I’ll skip it.’

  ‘Sies!’ my father says on that night’s Skype call. The picture of him twitches on screen, an angry-looking face shuddering a few centimetres to the left. ‘I thought we’d left all that kak about our name behind in South Africa.’

  He hasn’t got it yet. It’s not about our name. If a South African joke is about someone being stupid, that person’s always called van der Merwe. Just about nothing gets to Dad more than a van der Merwe joke. But they’re all the work of South Africans, all insiders.

  ‘This was different,’ Mom says. ‘They don’t know about those jokes. They were picking on him for being different, for his accent, and about the shape of boerewors.’

  ‘Well, you don’t go listening to mompies like that.’ Dad’s hand appears and points forcefully at the screen. ‘What a bonehead that Lachlan boy is. I wish I’d been there to straighten him out. I’m glad you stood up for yourself. Did you beat them in the fight?’

  Mom goes to speak again, but I get there first. ‘There were at least four of them. I got him, though. I got Lachlan. A teacher turned up pretty quickly.’