Cloudwish

by Fiona Wood

  ‘Too much?’ she asked, taking a deep breath.

  ‘Vân Ước Phan – could you please start speaking in class?’

  She felt a flood of relief that this new assessment form was going to be okay.

  ‘Tell me, how many times might you have read “Daddy”?’

  She tried to estimate. ‘Perhaps, twenty, thirty times? Maybe a few more.’

  ‘Your responses are original and well-expressed. You obviously thought about the poems, and had plenty of your own ideas, before you did the critical reading – and that, in my book, is the perfect way to read poetry. Well done.’

  ‘Thank you. She’s about my favourite poet.’

  ‘I think you’ve infected your study partner with a bit of enthusiasm, too.’

  ‘We talked a lot – about her.’

  ‘Good work on all counts, then. I’m going to tell you what I tell all my strong students – remember your work/life balance. The time you’ve put into this shows, and it’s to your credit. But do schedule some downtime.’

  ‘I will. Thank you, Ms Norton.’ She took her soft-with-wear copy of Ariel and left, heading for a folio meeting with Ms Halabi.

  Work/life balance? She didn’t even have life/life balance. It was more than she could cope with just trying to balance the wildly veering versions of real life versus wish life.

  Her new folio idea was a composite of close-ups of the perfect turf that blanketed the main oval. It seemed to be subject to intense attention; someone was always pulling out a weed, aerating the soil, measuring the moisture levels. It was a super-green graphic dream. She’d done some test shots of the grass at different angles and composed them in a grid that made the grass squares look like a woven textile.

  Ms Halabi looked through the prints and the rough composited image. ‘Talk to me.’

  ‘Well, it’s another example, I suppose, of focusing on a little thing – blades of grass, we walk on them, we don’t notice them particularly . . .’

  ‘And what it means to you . . .?’

  ‘It’s beautiful, if you look.’

  Ms Halabi was nodding. ‘There’s no doubt that you can present a folio and pretty much just say that – It’s a fresh look at the small things. It’s easy to overlook what is right before our eyes or under our feet – but the examiners are fond of a narrative. That’s why I keep asking.’

  ‘I don’t really have one.’

  ‘Yet. There’s no desperate hurry. We’re in a two-year program. I’m going to keep asking, though.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Lovely work. But keep it in the back of your mind: What does it mean? What does it mean to you?’

  chapter 42

  She’d never much asked the second of Ms Halabi’s questions. Always looking for meaning, deciphering codes, sure – how to present, how to study, how to fit in, how to disappear, how to fake it – but never enough what does it mean to me? She was used to second-guessing, staying in the background, and waiting for real life to begin in some distant future.

  If the thing with Billy was going to happen – if – she was never going to be friends with the girls in his group. Pippa might be an exception; she showed occasional signs of being human, at least.

  But Vân Ước had never tried to make her own friends here, never initiated any friendly contact. It wasn’t on the list. She could walk to practice with Polly, sit in a class meeting next to Lou and talk about irrational and transcendental numbers with Michael, but she’d pretty much thought of these years as the study zone, and imagined that real life – life as an art student, life with friends and lovers – would magically start when school finished. Art school was where she’d meet her people.

  But maybe life couldn’t be kept incubating indefinitely. Maybe it was ready to hatch a bit earlier, like right now, if only she’d play along.

  She took the winged cardigan out of her bag. This clear bright Tuesday, the first day of autumn, was the day to set it free, let it find its next custodian. She hadn’t had a chance to wear it again anywhere special, but she’d enjoyed living with this thing of strange beauty. She’d wondered a thousand times about its maker, its history and its future. It was folded and tied up with a ribbon. The label never had turned up, so she’d made a new one and pinned it inside, to make sure the cardigan’s story continued.

  ‘I spy stolen goods,’ said Holly when she saw the parcel.

  ‘Lock up your valuables, people,’ said Ava.

  Lou was bent down tying up her sneakers. She stood up and faced them – a formidable, bespectacled avenging angel. She had a big voice when she wanted to use it. Secret singer’s projection knowledge, no doubt.

  ‘Do you understand that what you just said is basically illegal? That it’s defamatory to slur somebody by lying about them? That you are, potentially, damaging Vân Ước’s reputation “in the eyes of reasonable people”, which is the legal test for defamation? That if she decided to sue you and you were prosecuted, you’d be ordered to pay her damages? Do you? Do you realise that?’

  ‘Settle down. If she gives it back, no biggie, right?’ said Holly.

  ‘SHE DIDN’T STEAL IT.’

  ‘Fine. Have it your way. Freak. But we all know the truth. As if any garment has ever had a label that says Wear me.’

  Michael looked up from his notebook.

  ‘Are you looking at me?’ Holly asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said calmly.

  ‘Well, don’t.’ Holly and Ava walked out rolling their eyes and giving each other crazy people looks.

  Michael had one of his abstracted whirring-cogs faces; it typically happened when he’d had a brainwave of some sort – a frequent occurrence. He looked around as though taking inventory of who was there – only about six people – shoved his notebook in his pack and walked out.

  Vân Ước braved up. She thought of balance. She thought, What does it mean to me? She thought of life being allowed to start here, right now, at school. She summoned her courage. ‘Lou – thank you for that.’

  Lou shook her head. ‘They’re such idiots.’

  ‘I’m delivering the cardigan back into its habitat. Do you want to come for the walk?’

  Lou smiled, as though she was genuinely pleased. Vân Ước corrected herself: Lou was genuinely pleased that she’d suggested they do something together, something friendly, something that had nothing to do with schoolwork.

  They crossed the road and entered the Botanic Gardens. They walked in companionable silence for a while, until Vân Ước remembered that this was officially her friend foray, so she should probably talk.

  ‘What work do your parents do?’ Okay, a bit random, but at least it was a start.

  ‘One’s a surgeon and the other’s a history academic. What about your folks?’

  ‘My mother does piecework sewing at home, mostly baby clothes. And my dad joints chickens in a chicken-processing factory.’

  ‘Wow. Hard work.’

  ‘Hard work, low wages. And if I get to do what I want to do, that’ll make three of us.’

  Lou smiled. ‘Are you talking about art?’

  ‘Yep. Only such a tiny percentage makes anything that resembles an income.’

  ‘True, but your stuff’s awesome, so, who knows? Listen, what you just said – only such a tiny percentage makes anything that resembles an income – do you mind me saying, you don’t at all speak like someone whose parents have English as a second language.’

  ‘It’s probably just from homework club.’

  ‘Really? Debi was your tutor, right? I sat near her last week – she’s terrifying some poor kid with Jane Eyre.’

  ‘I was that poor kid, five years ago. But it worked.’

  ‘As in . . .?’

  ‘As in, I probably do sound like I come from an English-speaking family, I guess.’

  ‘Yeah
, but how did it work? I’m tutoring now, don’t forget; I need some tricks of the trade.’

  ‘For starters, I’ve got a totally warped work ethic – courtesy of my parents – and I just drilled vocab for years, like really long lists every single week. And paralleling that, I fell in love with reading. After Jane Eyre we read Emma and Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey and To Kill A Mockingbird and The Catcher in the Rye and Wuthering Heights and The Great Gatsby and Dubliners and Tess of the D’Urbervilles –’

  ‘Well that one’s a major downer,’ said Lou.

  ‘Yes, I’m still recovering. And I’ve always read stacks of young adult fiction, and I like English as a subject and it all sank in, I guess. I suck at Vietnamese, though.’

  ‘Nobody’s perfect.’

  ‘How did you know that legal stuff?’

  Lou laughed. ‘TV.’

  ‘It was very convincing.’

  They arrived at the thatched shelter where Vân Ước had decided to leave the cardigan. It was on the opposite side of the gardens from where she’d found it. Maybe she should have gone further afield, but she wanted somewhere a bit protected. She gave the parcel a kiss goodbye and put it gently on the seat inside the shelter.

  ‘Farewell, pretty cardigan,’ said Lou.

  They headed back in the direction of school.

  Maybe this was a first step to her and Lou being proper friends. Jess could meet Lou and her mothers, and – she had a fleeting feeling of limitlessness, of disappearing boundaries, as she’d had at Mount Fairweather a couple of times – some days the horizon stretched right out.

  It was a scary feeling for someone who’d lived a cautious life.

  chapter 43

  She got home that afternoon to find her mother crying.

  Okay, a new level of expressing emotion could be good, right? Or had she unwittingly set in motion a flying-out-of-control/mother-misery-increasing-forever thing?

  ‘Mama, hi. Are you – can I get you anything?’

  ‘No.’ Her mother plucked a rumpled tissue from the sleeve of her cardigan and blew her nose. ‘Maybe some water.’

  Vân Ước poured two glasses of cold water from the jug in the fridge and gave one to her mother.

  ‘Anything you want to talk about?’

  ‘Ha! It’s all the talking that makes me cry. But they say it’s “normal”,’ her mother said. ‘It’s “okay” to cry.’

  ‘Of course it’s okay.’

  Her mother looked at her. ‘Listen to you – you are like a mother to me. Again.’ But her mother didn’t sound happy about it; she looked fed up, actually.

  Well, she was fed up, too.

  She’d always been comforted by how many words there were in the English language – more than a million. With so many words surely anything could be said, everything could be understood.

  But what did the volume of words matter in any language when she couldn’t even manage to ask the simplest questions? Will you tell me your story? Will you let me in to my own family? Isn’t it my story, too?

  Enough!

  She went into her parents’ room and slipped the photo of the two small girls from under the paper lining in her mother’s drawer. She brought it out and sat down with her mother. ‘I know I shouldn’t have looked.’

  Her mother took the photo, sighed, and sipped the water. ‘It’s me and Hoa Nhung.’

  ‘Please talk to me.’

  ‘I will start with a wish. When the boat landed . . .’ Her mother nodded and paused, as though changing her mind.

  Vân Ước held her breath. Even though her mother was skipping the whole chapter about what happened before they left Vietnam, and everything that might have happened during the journey itself, she was offering a fragment of her story. When the boat landed . . . Vân Ước was hungry, even for a morsel, just a crumb of story. She let maybe a minute pass. She could hear someone bumping around at Jess’s. It would be Jess starting to get things ready for dinner.

  ‘When the boat landed?’ she prompted softly.

  ‘It was a beach in Malaysia. We were taken by truck to the refugee camp.’

  ‘Who took you?’

  ‘The army. Army officers. They gave us some food and water – just what they had with them.’

  ‘And the wish?’

  ‘We spent a lot of time on the beach. It was so hot. But still, I walked up and down along the water edge. And I was wishing. Wishing just one thing. Wishing that my arms could turn into wings – wide, strong wings with long, white feathers.’ Her mother’s eyes were filling with tears again. Vân Ước patted her hand. Her mother wiped her eyes, smiling. ‘I never stopped wishing, but they didn’t change into wings.’

  ‘Where did you want to go?’

  ‘All I wanted was to fly across the sea, back to Vietnam and be in my mother’s arms again. I missed her so much. I couldn’t bear to be parted from her.’

  ‘But you had to leave?’

  ‘She wanted us to go. We knew it was our only hope for a life’.

  Vân Ước was scared to breathe, worried that she might break the talking spell. ‘I would miss you like that, Mama, if I had to leave.’

  Her mother gave her a tired smile. ‘No, con, not like that. My mother and I spoke the same language. You and I – our language is different.’

  Vân Ước felt guilty (again) that she’d dropped Vietnamese classes. But there wasn’t time. It didn’t have a role in her academic schedule, and that had to take priority. It was true her English was much better than her parents’, and their Vietnamese was much better than hers, so they ended up communicating in the in-between zone of basic Vietnamese with a smattering of even more basic English, like three primary-school-aged children.

  ‘I could go back and study more,’ she offered.

  ‘It’s not just language. It’s . . . the whole culture.’

  Vân Ước knew the truth of that. How could she deny it, having felt the thousand injustices of her parents not understanding the life they had chosen for her?

  ‘For my mother I had only respect and obedience. For her mother she had only respect and obedience . . .’

  ‘I respect you, Ma.’

  ‘In the way that you can.’ Her mother nodded. ‘You’re a good girl. But it is not the same. That chain has been broken. You have independence. Ba and I want that for you. But everything here is different. And that’s still hard for me.’

  ‘But not bad?’

  ‘No, not bad! You will have a good life. But the old life is gone forever.’

  Vân Ước felt the stab of a sad truth: she and her mother would never be as close as her mother and grandmother had been.

  Her mother got up, stretched her tidy, graceful frame and headed for the kitchen. Vân Ước wanted to be able to offer her some comfort, but what could she say? Her mother was right. The two of them represented an irreconcilable cultural split. Distance between them was inevitable.

  ‘Thanks for talking to me,’ she said.

  ‘Talking, huh! That’s enough for now.’ Her mother pushed her hair back dismissively and straightened her cardigan. ‘Như Mai is always saying to the group, Talk about your feelings, talk about your memories. And now I am sad again. Because of all the talking! Off you go, now. Time for homework.’

  But first she wrapped her mother into a hug. In her usual prickly way – all shrug and elbow – Mama resisted initially, but relaxed for a moment and hugged back before patting Vân Ước’s shoulder impatiently and pushing her gently in the direction of her room. ‘Study now!’

  It only felt half as annoying as usual.

  chapter 44

  No more than ten minutes into lunchtime on Wednesday, Ms King came into the year eleven common room without knocking. It was raining outside, so the room was full. Pippa and Tiff flicked their cigarettes out the window and Holly s
wiped a saucer ashtray from the kitchen area table and dumped it in the bin.

  ‘Get that down,’ Ms King said, referring to the tripod-and-stool arrangement. ‘And gather round.’

  She wasn’t looking amused.

  ‘Would anyone like to start?’ she asked. ‘Or do we treat you like year eights and say, Nobody’s leaving this room until someone confesses?’

  Billy was entirely unperturbed. ‘It was me,’ he said, sprawled on a sofa, with his mouth full.

  Ms King gave him the unblinking arctic stare she saved for very special occasions.

  Billy swallowed, stood up, and repeated the sentence in a more formal manner. ‘It was me, Ms King.’

  ‘And who are your henchmen?’ She eyeballed a few of the guys she obviously considered to be the usual suspects.

  Billy put up his hands, holding his wrists together. ‘Really, just me. Arrest me now. You didn’t find it even a little bit amusing?’

  ‘This is deceptive behaviour, and we don’t like it. It has led to further breaking of school rules, judging by the stench in here, and we don’t like that. As well, it took security a few days to cotton on, so now we look as though our systems don’t work particularly well, and we don’t like that either. Who else is involved?’

  Nobody said anything. Vân Ước wondered if she could swallow her fear and speak up. She was petrified by indecision. If the school decided to make a big deal out of this, it could jeopardise her scholarship. But despite Billy’s offer to take the blame, she knew perfectly well what was required of her, because what would Jane do?

  ‘Well? I’ve got all the time in the world,’ said Ms King.

  ‘As if Billy could take a photo to save his life,’ Holly muttered, staring at Vân Ước pointedly.

  ‘Do you have something to say, Holly?’

  ‘No, Ms King.’

  ‘Ms King,’ Vân Ước started. ‘I –’