by Fiona Wood
Jess started laughing.
‘What?’
‘I’m just thinking, worst-case scenario, say he is a bastard, and he does try something mean – you’ll get to use your favourite Jane quote.’
Vân Ước laughed too. And they said it together, in their best English accents. ‘Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? – You think wrong! – I have as much soul as you, – and full as much heart!’
It brought on a bad case of contagious giggles, and they were soon killing themselves laughing.
Fatal error. A banging on the wall started. The sounds of too much fun had filtered into the land of do-your-homework-study-hard.
Vân Ước got up, letting herself enjoy the lightness of heart that only came after a really good laugh with Jess, and left to face the music with her mother.
Walking along the corridor, she prepared herself for a talking-to about wasting valuable study time. She carefully stuffed her found cardigan into her backpack and unlocked the front door, wilting at the thought that she was going to get into trouble for messing around with Jess, as though she were a child, and yet she was also going to be the one checking up on her mother’s medication – counting pills and taking responsibility for doctor’s instructions being carried out, as though she were an adult.
She wouldn’t mind having a run of just being a regular teenager.
chapter 11
Tuesday morning was TOK, Theory of Knowledge, another compulsory IB study unit. It was a kind of philosophy course.
Vân Ước loved the content, but dreaded the nature of the class, which involved lots of public sharing of ideas and responses.
Today they were starting a unit looking at gender and society. Their teacher was Lucy Fraser. Dr Fraser. She was one of the youngest members of staff, and a dynamo. She was wiry; she ran marathons, she hummed with energy. Her short hair was dyed electric orange, so she pretty much looked like a lit match. And right now she was telling the class, incandescent, evangelistic, about how the allocation of space in department stores was just one more manifestation of the pressures put on women to conform to external social constructs.
‘Okay, let’s take a walk through the most expensive retail real estate in this city. In any city. We’re on the ground floor of David Jones, Saks, Harrods . . . What are the messages we’re getting? And to whom are these messages being directed?’
‘It’s mostly women’s cosmetics,’ offered Lou.
‘Exactly,’ said Dr Fraser.
Vân Ước hadn’t really questioned the significance of this before, but it hit her like a cartoon anvil as Dr Fraser continued, ‘And that prime real estate is overwhelmingly dedicated to letting women know that they don’t measure up. Your skin, your lips, your nails, they’re not the right colour; you don’t smell right; you’re too wrinkly; too oily; too dry. Why have we signed on for this?’
People were yawning, making some notes, checking Facebook, happy for Dr Fraser to do all the work.
‘Now let’s imagine walking through that same space and seeing the entire ground floor gender-flipped – all the products are dedicated to making men feel less-than. Men, you need this panoply, you get to choose from a hundred different varieties of black paste to wipe on your eyelashes, makeup to change your skin colour, blusher to give you an outdoor glow, age-minimising, pore-minimising, lip-maximising petroleum-based – crap. Why doesn’t the picture look like that?’
‘Until recently women had no power,’ said Sibylla. ‘They didn’t have the vote. They couldn’t inherit or own land. They’d usually be dependent on their partner or their father. And they’d attract a partner partly because of how they looked. So maybe the emphasis on women’s appearance is still a relic from that era.’
‘Yes. Women have had less power historically. Let’s look at the reasons behind that – what are some of the most obvious ones?’ She was greeted with silence. ‘Come on, has everyone done the reading for this class?’
‘There’s only been reliable contraception for about the last fifty years,’ said Lou.
Dr Fraser nodded. ‘In the scheme of things, control of fertility is a very recent gain. And remember, too, that dependence on men, on fathers, brothers, husbands, was enshrined in law. When did women get the vote? When were they enfranchised? Not until 1902. If you were an indigenous woman, or man, not till 1962.’ That elicited some shocked gasps. ‘What year could married women own land in Australia? It was 1879. When did they have rights over children in the event of a marriage being dissolved? 1839. When did rape within marriage stop being a legal right of a husband? In 1991, in England, and has not stopped yet in one hundred and forty-four countries. Right now.’
Dr Fraser paused to let it all sink in. Vân Ước looked around. Most people were now paying attention.
‘All the stats about income and stuff like domestic violence show that women are definitely still oppressed. But I still want to paint my toenails sometimes,’ said Sibylla.
Dr Fraser smiled. ‘Me too. We’re part of a complex pattern. What are some of the primary shapers of the pattern?’
Vân Ước looked at Billy. He straightaway looked up, made eye contact. She felt the heat rising to the surface of her skin. She looked down. But she couldn’t help herself; she glanced up again and Billy was still looking at her, smiling in a wondering way. Huh, wonder away. It was nothing compared to her level of wondering. What was going on in his head?
The conversation roamed through economics, social norms, intersectionality and the history of the women’s movement. They left with a reminder from Dr Fraser to look at the Mary Wollstonecraft readings on the subject portal and come to the next class ready to contribute.
She managed to dodge Billy for the rest of the day, and he wasn’t in the locker area after school. But Holly was.
‘Well, well, little Van Truck, the girl with wheels – and wings.’
Vân Ước gave what she hoped was a neutral glance at the group – Holly, Gabi, Tiff. All the hair-flicking and leaning and artfully combining poses made it look as though there must be a photographer about to shoot them at any moment. Because there was a photographer about to shoot them. One of them always had a phone stuck out at arm’s length, while each performed their face of the moment. They all checked out the image; each had veto if it was a horrible picture of any one of them. But they were all such adept posers it was never horrible. They all put themselves down expecting with full confidence that their friends would deny the false deprecation. I look like shit. Omigod, that is such crap, you are so gorgeous I hate you. A Botticelli-esque photo would capture them perfectly. In their uniforms, but posed as the Three Graces in Primavera. Billy could be the youth plucking an orange from the tree. It had the potential to say something about their self-importance, their inflated view of themselves, when, after all, they were just kids at school, not so different from lots of kids at lots of schools. It made her smile.
‘Ooh, she’s smiling at us. She thinks, “Billy called my cardigan cute, so now these gals are my pals,” ’ Holly said.
Vân Ước packed her bag as quickly as she could without looking like she wanted to run out of the locker room.
Holly walked over to her. ‘Are you deaf?’
‘No.’
‘Where did you buy the cardigan that Billy pretended he liked yesterday?’
She zipped her backpack, swung it onto her shoulders and tried to leave, but Holly blocked her path.
‘I didn’t hear an answer.’
She decided to tell the truth. ‘I found it.’
‘You found it? You mean you stole it?’
‘No.’
Holly stepped back as though Vân Ước were suddenly contagious, or smelled bad.
‘Why do they let people like that in?’ said Tiff.
‘It’s not even fair on them,’ added Gab
i.
Vân Ước walked out, silently cursing Billy for shining this unwanted light on her. She didn’t need the stress.
She’d walked out some of her anger by the time she reached the river, when she heard the troublemaker’s voice right behind her.
‘Wait up, Vân Ước.’ Billy jumped off his bike and was beside her before she could cross the road, detonate her backpack or put on her invisibility cloak. So she looked at the footpath. Looking down. Don’t knock it. It could be useful. It was the source of all the ideas she was developing for her folio. Billy leaned down and down until his face was in her eye line.
‘Yes?’
‘Which way you heading?’
She nodded in the direction of the river.
‘Can I walk with you?’
‘You’ve got your bike, it’d be quicker . . .’ If you jumped on it, and disappeared.
‘But I want to speak to you.’
‘Don’t you have to be somewhere else?’ Get. Lost.
He was gazing at her in an extremely disconcerting way.
‘It’s just, you said Friday is your only non-training day. And it’s Tuesday.’
He checked his watch. ‘Shit – sorry, you’re right. I do have to go.’
But he wasn’t budging. He was just looking at her.
‘What?’
‘Do you want to come too?’
A third theory occurred to her. Billy wasn’t in a wish-induced spell. There was never any joke with her as the punchline. He’d simply, and totally, lost the plot.
‘Come with you to rowing training?’
‘Yeah, and then maybe we could hang out.’
‘I have stuff to do.’ That was true. There was always stuff.
‘Sure. So, the other thing was, did you ask at your tutor program if I can come join?’
‘Well . . .’ She remembered Jess’s advice. It was certainly one way to flush out exactly what was going on. And he’d still need to have the Working With Children Check done, so that would take a couple of weeks, and by then it might all have resolved itself one way or the other.
‘Well?’ Billy gave her his most dazzling smile as he straightened his front wheel, forearms leaning on handlebars.
‘Okay. You can come for a try-out and meet the coordinator – after you get a Working With Children Check.’
‘Cool, I’ll come on Friday, then – I’ve already got my check from running the nippers program at the surf lifesaving club over summer.’
Damn it. Her buffer zone vaporised and floated skywards. ‘All right.’
‘So, see you then. See you tomorrow, actually. In maths.’
‘Sure.’
‘And English practice? Not tomorrow, but next Wednesday at mine should work.’
‘I can’t; I’ve got oboe class.’
‘And I’ve got training. So after – okay?’
‘Okay.’
She continued across the river, her shoes tapping out damn it damn it damn it damn it.
The billboards on the Albert Street corner sang their usual song: Thin is good. Half-naked is good. Blonde is good. White is good. But today, instead of it being semi-invisible wallpaper or a mild annoyance, a space from which she expected to be excluded, Vân Ước found herself thinking, Fuck you, advertisers, get your freaking photoshopped sexist Anglo-normative ideas about beauty out of my face.
That put a spring in her step. For starters, she only said fuck in her silent ranting. And it felt good. Second, she wasn’t in the habit of speaking out against blatant everyday racism such as the always-all-white dominance of every beauty advertisement and fashion magazine around, except if there was an ethnic Other-ing erotic/exotic angle, then, sure, cast Asian. Although why should having the right words to express her annoyance to herself make the annoyance feel any less annoying? The silent rebel. Woo.
Maybe it was just Dr Fraser’s contagious passion about not accepting all the messages that are shoved in the collective female face. Be sceptical. Ask why. She gave you the feeling that you could do something to change the world. That what you thought mattered. And that felt powerful. It was like what had happened physically at Mount Fairweather. Her body had changed – she’d become fitter, stronger, tougher.
Maybe, eventually, she’d also have some more muscle in the way she dealt with the world. She’d be able to live up to the What would Jane do? standard, not just the I know what Jane would do, but I can’t actually do it standard.
chapter 12
Once she was home and waiting for the lift to groan its way down to pick her up in the ground floor lobby, she was hit by a half-formed worry lurching into uncomfortable focus. Billy was just like those billboard girls, wasn’t he? Couldn’t she see him up there in some Calvin Klein boxers? He wouldn’t even need photoshopping. He looked unbelievably good in just his bike shorts. Wasn’t he the most conforming version of blond Anglo male beauty she’d ever seen in real life? Had she internalised a paradigm she should be questioning or, better still, outright rejecting? Too late for a political light bulb moment now. Her imagination had signed on from the moment she first saw him without clearing it with her brain, and since then she’d become just as interested in whatever was brooding away under the surface as she was in the beautiful surface itself.
Unlocking the front door, she stepped right into double-uh-oh land.
Uh-oh number one: no smell of cooking; no sign of food preparation. Uh-oh number two: neat stacks of cut-out garments still sitting in taped plastic bags on the kitchen bench.
She had hoped they’d prevent it this year, but maybe not, maybe they’d hit a speed bump that was too high and rolled backwards.
When Dr Chin had confirmed the post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis, he’d gone through the treatment in detail: antidepressants and therapy. But because her mother had stopped feeling well, got careless with the tablet taking, and had not increased the dose as she’d been instructed to . . . here they were again.
She could see why the worst time for her mother each year coincided with the anniversary of the boat journey from Vietnam, and how the PTSD had become a monster, ready to burst forth each year, still ravenous. But she also imagined that whatever her mother had witnessed, whatever she’d experienced, was with her every day. Every morning when she woke. Every evening when she tried to sleep. What did she see? Vân Ước longed to know, and at the same time half-hoped never to know. She wondered if the nightmares of her imagination came close to her parents’ experience.
Under the doctor’s direction, and with her father’s agreement, she had partly bossed and partly cajoled her mother into agreeing to attend group therapy with other women who’d made the journey. The conversation had gone something like:
‘Ma, Dr Chin says there’s a group of women who meet and talk to each other about leaving Vietnam.’
‘Why would anyone want to do that?’
‘It’s run by that social worker – you know Như Mai? Who visits people here? And she brings families to homework club sometimes? You’ve met her. She’s nice.’
‘Why is it her business to get everyone to talk about this? And why are you telling me?’
‘Because it might help you to go along. Dr Chin said you should go.’
‘I’m not going anywhere. I don’t know these people.’
‘It could be that some of your friends will be there.’
‘My friends and I don’t need to talk. We got out. And we got on with things.’
‘You didn’t have any counselling when you arrived though, did you?’
‘Counselling?’
Vân Ước hadn’t used quite the right word in Vietnamese. ‘You know what I mean – talking through your problems.’ She was trying not to sound impatient or disrespectful.
‘Sounds like a waste of time. If you survive, your problems are gone.’
; So many of her mother’s family members had died, it was hard to argue: if you survived, your problems were gone. The most pressing one, anyway: how to stay alive.
But her mother had been going along to group therapy for a couple of months now and was, for her, pretty positive about it.
Vân Ước went quietly into her parents’ room, in case her mother was asleep.
She wasn’t sleeping. She was staring at the ceiling.
Sitting down lightly on the bed, Vân Ước took her mother’s hand. ‘Mama? Are you okay?’
‘Vân Ước, con.’
Con meant ‘child’ but with overtones of something like ‘little one’; it was an affectionate greeting, in any case, so she took courage. ‘Mama, you’re not feeling well? I’m bringing in your tablets.’
‘Leave them. They don’t work.’
‘Dr Chin told you – you have to keep taking them, and increase the dose to make sure they keep working. Today we’ll start again. I’m making another appointment for you to see him. We’re going to do what he says, and stick with these tablets.’
Her mother rolled her head away. ‘You treat me like a child.’
‘I’m trying to look after you well, like a mother, like you look after me.’
‘I don’t need it. I am the mother.’
‘But you still need help sometimes.’
During exchanges like this, Vân Ước had to try to forget the frequent, imperious command Do for me! (read something, explain to someone, pay a bill, make a complaint, speak on the phone, give technical advice . . .) which didn’t fit so well with I am the mother. Her mother never acknowledged these inconsistencies.
The expression on her face was mutinous. She was strong-willed. And that didn’t change when she was unwell.
‘What about when I am a doctor?’ Vân Ước asked, mentally crossing her fingers for peddling the family dream when she had no intention of making good on it.
Aha. The wedge. Her mother was smiling.
‘If you work hard enough. Study hard. We will be so proud of our daughter. You will live in a big house, in Kew.’