I get to your house just as the sun starts to peer over the horizon. A golden light streaks across the city like it's searching for something. The curtains are still drawn and I wonder how you and the girl you left me for are sleeping right now.
I leave the box on your doorstep with the cat's head facing up and her mouth open.
As though she is trying to speak.
So I stopped looking for Umlaut. Does that make me a shitty friend? Would you call it a friendship anyway, or was it just a string of disasters I had to bail her out of?
From that time when we were six and old prune face, our teacher Miss Baker, made her stand in the corner, disregarding her raised hand until she pissed herself, I was the one who would always be there, mopping up the tears and other secretions. Now that I think about it, Miss Baker was neither as old nor as pruney as we had imagined. Maybe she was about 29. Bitterness is ageing.
She was under a misapprehension, Miss Baker was. She thought she was moving up in the world, leaving the greyness of working-class England to teach children in a genteel expatriate community. But on her first day she surveyed our many-coloured skin tones as we trooped toward the schoolhouse from under the mango tree, and white was scarce among them. Half-castes had not been the plan. You see, those snobs whose society she so coveted had sent their kids to boarding school in London. They would pass her by, walking their dogs every single day and meeting the terms and conditions of their contracts with the British North Borneo Banking Company.
When we were settled under the creaking fans in the tropical heat, Miss Baker had to read the roll and she couldn't pronounce any of our names. A bead of sweat had formed on her upper lip.
‘Khilnani, Vijaya?' Her voice was so tentative that we giggled, but Vijaya agreed that she was there.
‘Lei, Mai?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Here.’
‘Schmitt, Umlaut?’
No answer.
‘Is this a joke?' she said.
‘Maybe it's the new girl,’ someone said, pushing a small child in a yellow playsuit to the front.
‘Is your name Umlaut?’
The child nodded. Miss Baker's mouth disappeared. All that was left was a slash of tangerine lipliner.
‘You're not telling tales? Your parents named you after a diacritical mark?’
No answer.
None of us knew who die and critic were, but they sounded awful. Together we sucked all the air from the room as Miss Baker strode to the whiteboard, and with a thick marker drew two solid black circles on its squeaky surface.
‘This is who you are, is it?' she said, pointing at the dots.
‘Ohhh, yes,’ we breathed, relieved that she had explained it. Umlaut had two huge black eyes, like burnt raisins in a scorched gingerbread man. What else would you call her?
‘Go stand in the corner. Now!’
Miss Baker returned to her desk, mute. She had escaped nothing by leaving. It had been folly; a dream of being embraced into a cultured routine of Pimms at the yacht club and coffee on Wednesdays in superior society. Now she was stuck here with us.
With the clanging of the bell, the class bolted for sunlight. None of them looked at Umlaut or Miss Baker. I hung back.
After Miss Baker was gone, I grabbed my sports bag and pulled out my T-shirt and gym shorts and helped Umlaut into them. That's when I discovered she was a he. Oh, you didn't know that either?
I knew what it was like to want to be something different and I respected that so never referred to her as a he. Ever. I was the secret keeper.
We got through the whole of primary school without anyone finding out. She had such beautiful eyes, you see. Such long lashes. Some time in middle school, one of the boys learned the truth and told the whole soccer team. Best not to describe what they did to her.
The next day Umlaut's father brought her to school. He continued to do so for two weeks while her mother stayed at home hiding a broken nose and a smashed eye. He had been so pissed off to receive the phone call from the principal. So angry with his wife for being so stupid and enrolling Frederick under his pet name. And so furious with himself for being ensnared by an ignorant local slut in the first place.
Umlaut arrived with yellow and purple fingermarks around her neck, which Miss Baker, so swallowed up by her own disappointment, ignored.
Ahem
Hh-hmm
mmmmmmm
hm
um
mhmm
mm
err, hmm uh-huh
ahhh
ah
err—
ohh
hah
ha-hah
uhh, mhmmph,
mm.
Of Oxen
We take Mum to a teppanyaki bar,
her anniversary present.
There are great big artworks on the walls
of oxen, pheasants and carp.
She always tells us Dad bought Chinese
when they dated.
How many years has it been?
Sweet and sour pork was his favourite,
from Kwang Tong Palace.
It's not the same but
they had a picture
of an ox too, he explains.
I didn't say that, Mum snaps,
not meaning to,
so laughs and asks, Only one?
I can't remember.
They never do serve
the tongue, she muses
in a way that says we are fond of that muscle,
as the waitress observes,
waiting.
You can tell she is used to this.
Urinal Etiquette
Take a corner, piss into it.
If those are busy, hide
in a nearby stall,
be polite—
lock the door, don't
tread under your neighbour's wall
unless you want him to think you're a voyeur,
or looking for some glory-hole
but ensure,
if you do take the trough,
that you stand legs apart equidistant,
watch the cistern, unzip—
—face your guilt—
and angle low
to prevent splashback,
plain avoid
targeting urinal cakes or drains,
exposing your balls
—totally unnecessary—
or crossing into another person's stream,
not even with the friend you brought in just for company,
no excuses
—nothing is more important—
take advice at the fountain
of wisdom about relationships, or worse,
be wary—
it's yellower on the other side of the tile
—you filthy bastard—
shake twice and never
reach across others
to flush the tray
—disgusting
Make it to the washbasin just
so you can pourpourpour that water
—as if the splash would make you clean—
all piss scat and fart, a soiled fiend;
be afraid,
hide your shame
and see how bystanders turn aside
as your faucet fails to drip;
dry, lame,
unable,
unwilling to leak.
Collision
The impact wouldn't have left us
gasping if not for outpouring gases,
clouds
shifting like natural proclivities above
dusty flats of parallax cattle,
two Xanax in the afternoon
and a panic
you said wouldn't fear
the not-yet-rationalised,
tucked into cupboards, away
from existence, this happenstance,
an intersection
of lives beyond threshold
crossed en route, and leaves signifying
any single moment at w
hich
a tree dies, having
bent its spine in the shape
of a question about
our waitress, slouched on a milk crate,
sharing her cigarette
with the breath of an oncoming train as it pushes forward
horizon,
near enough to be known, but not so close
that you cross or re-cross your legs
in waiting rooms,
snapping the heel as
love kicks a dog,
til its
movement
through the immeasurable
assumes no movement
at all.
Man Eating Bird
I bite into thighs so full they drip
juice, saliva
salting my lips with secret
herbs and spices
as she kicks, almost cries,
clutching her insides, a feather
between laughter and dying.
Your nanna is a lesbian?
Plucking that tender heartstring
like the bone in my teeth.
So?
I prise it out, sucking the end
for its skin.
Love is wrinkled,
fattening,
and this bird has my desire
deep-fried.
No pleasure like a warm meal.
Yet, I hesitate. Wary of the grin.
The chips
—and the potato with gravy—
are hers; she's familiar
to clubs
but deadly with
spades.
Chicken?
I guard—
drumstick in hand, napkin
as shield—
practising Sun Tzu on a
tub of sweet dipping sauce
but foiled,
she eyes the telly, some
ABC doco about cassowaries
and asks, Don't they eat people?
No—the laughter is mine—
but their kick can gore you,
it's possible they'd
want to pick the remains.
She nods.
Hums
or trills.
So they do eat people!
And this time I have to agree.
I have a little light-bulb-shaped scar sitting atop my upper lip. I got it in primary school, when the Class Crazy hit me in the face with a broken-off tree branch. I like it. It's so little and so perfect. A person can only see it if they get up really close to me. I imagine somebody noticing it when they are about to kiss me, like a light-bulb going on ding! in their head—a blazing thought!—and kissing becoming, just for that second, a work of genius.
It's a funny scar, because it's just a mess of thin lines, but it was a big, stupid scab on my face for a long time. The Class Crazy, Odd Robert, said he didn't mean to do it and it didn't really matter that he did, but it seemed a little unfair that I had a weeping scab-moustache and he just had the same funny pigment problems as always, and didn't even get a telling off for flying into such a rage.
When he hit me it felt like my whole face went very hot for one white-flash moment, then cold and numb. I was slack-jawed and weaving, everybody said, and then it started to bleed, and oh, they all screamed. I remember looking up into the dry, old sky with the taste of metal in my mouth and ringing in my ears. Then everything got this glossy sheen to it, as if the world had been sneezed on, and a little bird with blue wingtips hopped daintily off the wire fence then swooped at my head, screeching. The walk to the office felt very long. I left a trail of crimson in my wake.
When she arrived at the end of the sick-bay cot, my neighbour Josephine cupped my chin in her hand gently. Her large and luminous eyes held my gaze and she flicked her ponytail at the buxom matrons fussing over me. Josephine was never one for fussing over a child, perhaps because she herself detested being fussed over. She told me the wound made me handsome and tough and that it wouldn't last such a long time, while poor Odd Robert would have the same blotches and white bits all over for his whole life. And he couldn't play on the grass because it made him itch.
‘If that's not enough to give you a temper, I don't know what is,’ she said, easing the reddened gauze away from my pulpy face.
I never argued with Josephine.
Josephine prised my fingers from the blood-soaked rag and handed it, smiling, to the nurse. She smoothed my hair and dabbed my lip with a fresh, damp cloth. Being still was always hard for me, but there was something—in the smell of disinfectant and the squeaking of sensible shoes on linoleum—that stopped me from wriggling. She kissed my cheek and told me I was brave. I swung my scrawny chicken-stick legs back and forth, looking at the ceiling while she wiped and cleansed. I ached then, as I always did, to be a little older, a little taller. For the ten years between Josephine and me to melt away.
‘You'll mend,’ she told me, with the same air of conclusion as before, and though still tearful, I believed her.
Sometimes I think that every girl I have ever loved was a little like Josephine—or at least, I wanted them to be.
We collected my backpack and Josephine offered to carry it home for me, to give me a rest from the pummelling of the day. I felt valiant and vulnerable all at once, and at a terrible loss as to what to say. It was my first experience of being cared for in such a gentle way by someone not of my kin, and it placed a different palm print on my wet-cement heart. It was a feeling I recalled years later, when I found that I loved people and they loved me back. I would love someone, and it would hurt in the same blood-pumping way that my face had hurt after Odd Robert smashed it in—throbbing and liquid.
I wonder if it feels the same for everybody, that kind of hurt. That feeling when your nose is flattened, or when something hits some part of you where you're not protected by enough flesh. Shoulderblades, knuckles, knees, elbows—but especially the face.
Josephine didn't bother with having the school call my mother and father, she just walked me slowly home. She gave me a cup of juice with a straw, and told me I could play poker with her if I wanted. The afternoon off school, no homework and a game of cards! The throb in my face felt almost triumphant. She scooted next door to fetch a pack. I could see into her living room from my bedroom. She lived with her mother and her mother's friend, a dark-browed woman with thick knuckles and broad shoulders. Her short wavy hair was held up in a quiff. Sometimes I saw them: Josephine's pale mother sitting on the floor, leaning against the bare, dark shins of her friend, reading or sipping or chattering softly. The wall around that window was covered in jasmine.
We played poker til dusk came and brought the mosquitoes, although I was only nine and my parents wouldn't have normally consented to it. Then a curious nervousness crept over me as my papa rolled his car down the driveway, crunching the dead fern leaves in time to the throb in my lip. Josephine talked to him quietly, the car door between them, their fingers lingering in the open window, not casting so much as a glance my way. I slapped intently at my mosquitoes til Papa came over and stroked my hair.
‘Tough face, eh?’ he said, gap-toothed with his hair flopping over his wide, pale forehead.
My father was a gentle man, and I, his gentle child. My parents were good people who taught me to be kind and to never sell myself short.
We waved to Josephine as she walked backwards to her own yard, vaulting the fence with her regular grace. She'd forgotten her cards so I scooped them up carefully from the table. Discarding the paint flakes, I packed them nicely and made Papa promise we would run them over that night.
I didn't feel that I'd learned anything especially, but later, when my scab turned into a light-bulb, I wondered if there might have been some bright realisation that I'd overlooked. These days I perform my history dogmatically, having learned the value of a well-spun tale.
I told the story of Odd Robert again tonight, enjoying the smug bubble of knowing I'm being paid attention by a gardenful of folk. I was sitting in a neighbour's b
ackyard, quietly mourning the loss of my most recent, and least gentle, of lovers. I held a glass of rose in one hand and clutched a cigarette in the other; I sported a straw hat and also a pair of shorts. It was just my luck to have recently crashed my bike and to have legs covered in bruises and large scabs. This had been making me self-conscious all week, but it had been too hot for long trousers. I crossed and uncrossed my legs, repeating the motion in pursuit of that grounded feeling which is achieved by a good dose of fidgeting.
The story of my light-bulb scar worked tonight in the way my stories always do. Folk look at you in a different light, as though you're in the pound, beaming up at them, a whiskery dream, and they cannot help but want to take you home. Helpless. Terribly noble. It has become a bad habit of mine, talking up the minimal and abstract violence of my childhood for an audience.
Someone turned to me and asked after my lover. I crossed and uncrossed my legs again, focusing my eyes somewhere over the fence. I told them that my lover was so severely lactose intolerant that when dairy cropped up in her food her eyes would roll back in her head and she'd gag til her face went purple. I told them that wheat upset her, bloated her with rage, and that she had beaten me across the shoulders with a coathanger in a fit of bad digestion. The corners of my mouth twitched.
‘Some folks just can't eat anything’, I drawled and rolled my eyes.
Having learned that I can hold court with a casual embellishment, I've become lazy, and also a liar. I moved the conversation on before the truth of my hurting became obvious.
‘At the moment I'm stuck on this image of my ma leaning against the kitchen bench, opening her mail and weeping,’ I offered, exhaling dramatically. The little crowd at our end of the yard cocked their ears. People know the sounds of a story rolling into existence. I might as well have begun with ‘Once upon a time’.
‘“All alone,” she says, “all alone.” Shoulders heaving as she holds her new Medicare card. She runs her fingers over the raised letters of her name and misses us, my sister and me, because we've got our own cards now and no longer feature on hers.’
The woman with the stripy bandana to my left chimed in.
‘You get along real well with your mum, hey?’
I harped on about our closeness and watched them become enthralled. One of my knee scabs began to weep a little, and I stuffed the hand that was worrying it into my pocket, swiftly picking another story I like to tell—the one about my birth.
The Life You Choose and That Chose You Page 16