Our Australian Girl: Marly Walks on the Moon
Page 6
‘But dear, that’s not very pretty,’ said Kimberly’s mum. ‘Don’t you want this lovely green . . .?’
‘No!’ insisted Marly. And then realising she sounded rude, she said quickly, ‘No, thanks. Just the black pencil.’
Kimberly’s mum sighed and helped Marly put on the make-up she wanted. ‘You’re a stubborn little girl, aren’t you?’
Marly could tell that she was disappointed that Marly wasn’t more made up by the way she didn’t smile when she finished, but Marly didn’t care. The past couple of weeks had made her realise that she didn’t have to do things she didn’t want to. She looked in the mirror and smiled. She liked the way she looked and that was all that mattered. She turned to face the stage. She felt ready.
‘Agghh!’ came a wail from behind her. It was Kylie, standing there with one shoulder strap hanging down on her purple leotard. ‘It’s broken!’ She was in tears.
A line of fifteen kids were waiting to have their make-up redone. ‘We’re on next!’ someone piped up. ‘Quick, you have to make us all look like rabbits!’
Marly heard Kimberley’s mum sigh and knew that there was too much for her to do with too little time.
Marly stepped forward. ‘I can fix that,’ she said. ‘Does anyone have a needle and thread?’
Kimberley’s mum gratefully pointed to the corner of the trestle table. Kylie took off her costume and hovered uncertainly. Here was the girl that had once teased her about her dancing, Marly thought, and now she’s just standing around being a sook in nothing but her Care Bears underpants and singlet. For once, Marly felt sorry for her. She threaded a needle and sewed the shoulder strap back on Kylie’s costume as best as she could, making sure that the seam was on the inside so that her stiches could not be seen, just as Grandma had taught her.
‘Here you go,’ she said, handing the costume back to Kylie. ‘All done.’
‘Thank you thank you thank you!’ gushed Kylie as she quickly slipped it back on. Marly watched Kylie find her friends, face still blotchy pink from crying. They hugged her and patted her on the back, making sure she was ready to perform.
‘Our next act comes from a Grade Five group who call themselves the Electric Youth,’ the Principal announced when the rabbits came off-stage. ‘Parents and teachers and children put your hands together for Electric Youth!’
Kimberly, Kylie and Jessica appeared on stage in their leotards and leg warmers, their hair all frizzed. The song ‘Oh what a feeling!’ blared over the loudspeakers as they began dancing.
Marly stood and watched for a minute behind the stage curtain. She smiled. They were pretty bad. Then she went backstage to put on her own costume. First, the white shirt, then the leggings with the stripes down the sides, then the glitter socks and granny’s mended slippers, and then Grandpa’s fedora. Finally, the sequinned white glove. Marly felt like a different person, someone more dazzling. She held her folded shower curtain in her non-gloved hand.
The song onstage stopped and there was a round of applause. The stage went dark and the curtains closed. ‘Good luck,’ whispered Kylie as she ran offstage. Marly smiled, surprised, then ran to the centre of the black stage, unfolded her shower curtain and laid it out flat. She stood still in the middle of it, her heart hammering in her chest. It was so dark and eerily quiet.
‘Now it’s Marly from Grade Five doing “Billie Jean”,’ declared the Principal. ‘Put your hands together for Marly!’
A single spotlight lit the centre of the stage where Marly stood, gloved hand on her fedora hat, looking down. The opening beat to ‘Billie Jean’ boomed out over the stage. Marly looked out at the audience and couldn’t see any faces, only a sea of darkness because the lights onstage were so bright. She began with a dramatic spin, high kick, rolling arm combo that looked a little like kung fu. Suddenly the auditorium erupted into applause.
Taken aback by the noise, Marly misjudged her landing on her next jump and slipped on the shower curtain, falling flat on her stomach. She could hear lots of gasps from the audience, and a voice calling out, ‘Oh no, is she all right?’
Marly wanted to cry – the shock of the fall had made her forget the next steps to her dance. She didn’t know what to do. No one was laughing at her, but she could sense that people thought that she had been seriously hurt.
Then Marly remembered her dad’s roly-poly egg: no matter how many times you knocked it down, it would bounce back up again. Resilience. With one hand holding her hat in place, she pushed herself up off the floor, shooting straight into a crouching position like a panther, and then up, up, up, into an enormous starburst of a jump with a spin in mid-air. She landed on her feet and flung her hat off to the side of the stage.
There was more deafening applause, and laughter, and hollers of ‘You legend, Marly!’ It sounded like Kane. But now Marly knew not to let the noise distract her – whether it was the audience’s gleeful praise or shock or awe, none of it mattered. All that mattered were her moves. Marly knew her routine off by heart, but her fall had made her improvise, made her inventive. She did a freestyle shuffle, and then something she made up involving a pirouette that Lauren had once showed her, and then a leap through the air.
Her white glove flashed like a moving diamond on stage. Finally, when the song was nearing its end, Marly did the moonwalk. She positioned her feet on the shower curtains and started walking backwards like she was on a flat escalator – the famous moonwalk that no kid at school had ever perfected.
The audience whooped and hollered and cheered, and Marly finished off with the splits, her arms in the air. The lights went dark and the clapping was deafening. Marly looked offstage and caught Yousra, waiting for her own class act, winking at her and giving her the double thumbs up.
‘Magic,’ Yousra mouthed.
WHEN Marly got offstage and returned behind the curtains, Kane patted her on the shoulder and congratulated her. ‘Man, you were ace!’ said Kane, still in his half-a-cow outfit. ‘I wish I could move like that.’
‘I could teach you,’ said Marly, suddenly shy. She was not used to Kane being so nice. Kimberly and Kylie bounced over and told Marly that they loved her dance.
‘Thanks,’ said Marly, ‘you guys were pretty good too.’
Maybe her classmates weren’t so bad after all, she thought. She had always been too shy and scared to be herself because she didn’t want anyone to make fun of her. Now she realised that being her true self like she was with Yousra – confident, energetic and free – made her someone who others wanted to be around.
Yousra’s class bounded onstage in a flash of lights and noise. They did their acrobatics – somersaults, leaps, jumping off ladders and human pyramids – to a lot of cheers. Soon it was time for Yousra’s solo cartwheeling across the stage. She did two in a row very quickly and then walked backwards and pretended to trip over a banana peel – her fake moonwalk. Everyone laughed, and Marly was pleased that people were seeing the funny side of her friend that she had always known and loved.
When the concert was over, all the kids went into the hall for cordial and cookies with the parents. Marly spotted her mum and grandpa in the corner, beaming with pride. When Marly ran over, her mum hugged her close. ‘You have to show your dad what you did tonight,’ her mum told her. ‘It was amazing. We didn’t know you had this talent. We thought you just had a lot of crazy energy that could get you into mischief.’
Marly had not been this happy for a long time – tonight she felt more like herself than ever, more loved than ever too. Tonight her family had proven that they had not forgotten her – Grandma was at home minding Michael so her mum could come to her concert, and her father was going to watch her dance the moonwalk again. Her mum even mentioned that she could perhaps look into taking some dance lessons, and Marly was rapt; at last, she was being taken seriously.
Yousra and her mother appeared with baby Awi, who was now walking and holding a mushed-up egg and mayo sandwich in one hand. ‘Hello,’ Marly said to him and he cackled. ‘A
llo,’ he replied back. He really was quite adorable and Marly realised that she couldn’t wait until baby Michael was able to walk and talk. Already he could recognise her face, and smile at her, and grab her finger in his tiny fist.
Surrounded by friends and family, Marly felt a bit sad that the school year was coming to an end, and that next year Yousra would be in high school. But she knew that they would always be friends, and that things would be better at school now she wasn’t afraid to be herself. Marly took off her sequinned glove as her mother handed her a sandwich and a brownie on a paper plate. She wasn’t sure when she would get to wear her amazing costume again, or even if she would ever: after all, she was growing tall so fast. Soon her feet would be much larger than Grandma’s.
But none of this mattered tonight. Marly knew that she had done what she had set out to do, and that was enough.
She had walked on the moon.
In the 1980s the Australian Government encouraged family migration to Australia and allowed people like Marly’s grandparents to settle there if they had family to sponsor and take care of them. These new arrivals brought from their home countries different cultural ways of doing things.
Migrants from China and Southeast Asia follow a tradition called ‘sitting the month’, where a new mother is treated like a queen for a month after giving birth to her baby: she doesn’t have to do any housework, and is supposed to lie in bed and be fed nutritious food to help regain her energy. This cultural practice began in ancient China during the Han dynasty, and is meant to deter health problems later in life.
But new mothers who follow all the rules can’t leave the house, use stairs, drink cold water and, in some strict cases, can’t even take a shower for a whole month! This is why Marly’s mum is so frustrated: a lot of women who moved to Australia as refugees had to work to earn a living for their families, so a month of not working meant a month of no pay.
According to Chinese custom, when a male baby turns one month old, a ceremony is held to celebrate his first full month of life. This is also the end of the mother’s time of staying at home, so it is a double celebration. Eggs, dyed red to symbolise good luck and fortune, are given to relatives and friends. In return the baby is given red envelopes filled with money, which the parents will keep for him.
In 1983, Australia broke America’s 132-year winning streak when they won the America’s Cup in the yacht Australia II. In celebration of the win, special America’s Cup stamps were designed for Australia Post.
My parents were born in Cambodia. My mum worked in a plastic bag factory when she was only 13 years old, and my dad’s family owned that factory. That’s how my parents met!
In 1975, there was a war in Cambodia and my parents were separated. Four years later they met again in Vietnam, and romance blossomed. In December 1980, my parents came as refugees by boat to Australia. I was born a month later. Dad named me Alice, because he thought Australia was a Wonderland. I was their first Australian Girl. Like Marly, I grew up in the western suburbs of Melbourne, behind a carpet factory. Braybrook was a very multicultural neighbourhood and I had friends from all over the world.
My husband Nick is from countryside Corryong. We have travelled all over the world, but when we think of home we always think of Australia.
I was born and grew up in Italy, a beautiful country to visit, but also a difficult country to live in for new generations.
In 2006, I packed up my suitcase and I left Italy with the man I love. We bet on Australia. I didn’t know much about Australia before coming – I was just looking for new opportunities, I guess.
And I liked it right from the beginning! Australian people are resourceful, open-minded and always with a smile on their faces. I think all Australians keep in their blood a bit of the pioneer heritage, regardless of their own birthplace.
Here I began a new life and now I’m doing what I always dreamed of: I illustrate stories. Here is the place where I’d like to live and to grow up my children, in a country that doesn’t fear the future.
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First published by Penguin Random House Australia, 2016
Text copyright © Alice Pung, 2016
Illustrations copyright © Lucia Masciullo, 2016
The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Cover and internal design by Evi O. © Penguin Random House Australia
Illustrations by Lucia Masciullo
Cover portrait © Tim de Neefe
penguin.com.au
ouraustraliangirl.com.au
ISBN: 978-1-74348-560-6
Charms on the front cover reproduced with kind permission from A&E Metal Merchants.
www.aemetal.com.au
THE BEGINNING
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