by Alice Pung
When I was fourteen, I realised why we weren’t allowed to tell a soul what Mum did, and why Dad had told me once that it was a little like stealing. ‘We don’t pay taxes on this,’ my mother said. ‘The government will get us.’ The government would tax Mum on her two dollars fifty an hour? That did not make sense even to me. But to illiterate migrants like Mum who were paid cash in hand and asked no questions, it made perfect sense.
Even when the surgeon’s scalpel stabbed Mum through the palm so deep that the handle had to be unscrewed to get the blade out, we were not to tell. I remember Mum coming into the house, one hand holding the other like a dead bird. ‘The knife stabbed through,’ she gasped to Dad. The rims of her eyes were not even red-wet with reflexive tears.
Mum was brave, but it was only later in life that I came to this realisation. When I was young, I didn’t care. She was never in the house and I had howling babies to watch over, when all I wanted to do was muck around with my nine-year-old mates.
Two decades later, Mum finally stopped working. I had made it to university, and my three siblings were looking as if they would follow suit.
When Mum stopped working, she discovered she could not be still. Her hands ached to the bone. She had a hacking cough from the potassium cyanide. She had puckered skin on her forearms from third-degree burns of the welding torch and scars from the surgeon’s scalpel. Her eyesight was shot, and she needed glasses, which she kept losing, because she never used them to read. She did not read, she could not read.
Mum was locked from the language of the outside world. She had spent two decades in that shed, making those rings and pendants and bracelets. A bracelet would earn her twenty dollars, but it would take her a whole day. That worked out to be a couple of dollars an hour for an eight-hour day. Two dollars fifty does not even get someone a cup of coffee at Starbucks these days. So of course, all our coffee came in massive tins of International Roast from the local Coles supermarket. She would also have tins of sweetened condensed milk in the cupboard, and she mixed it with the coffee and boiling water and gulped cupfuls of that stuff down like there was no tomorrow, even though she knew there was and that it would be exactly the same as the previous day, and the one before that, and the one before that. She woke up each morning blinking at the ceiling of our new house wondering what she would do for the next three decades. Mum was forty, and her life was finally confined to supermarket shopping. That was all. The rest of her world had receded into unintelligible sounds and symbols.
‘Your mother’s been here twenty years, why doesn’t she speak English?’ people at the university asked me in bewilderment. There was a group that called themselves the Socialist Alternative and they once invited me to one of their meetings, when one of them in my Global Politics class discovered what my mother did. ‘Tell us about how bad it was for your mother,’ they urged.
I thought about my mum working for two decades, an active independent business contractor. Then I thought about her not working, lying in bed at home with limp creaking limbs and Zoloft in her bloodstream. ‘It wasn’t that bad, really.’
We were all seated in a large circle on the floor and there was a cardboard box of organic cooperative food in the middle. One of the Alternative Socialists picked up a roll. ‘What do you mean it wasn’t that bad? Of course it must be effing awful. It must have been, like, the living manifestation of the Third World in the First World.’
‘No.’ I was resolute in my conviction: ‘My mother’s work gave her a sense of purpose and dignity.’
‘Dignity?’ They were so wide-mouthed incredulous that I could see the masticated remnants of their beansprout alfalfa wholemeal rolls. ‘What kind of dignity is that? That’s exploitation!’
They wanted to see me as stoic, because they wanted to offer polite charges of bravery before charging on to their manifestos of destroying the capitalists. They needed a scapegoat, but I thought about my mother’s ‘friends’ in the jewellery stores – the small-business owners: the Kims, the Trans, the Quachs – industrious people with terror in their eyes whenever they saw parking inspectors, let alone police. The university socialists needed to see me as a suffering victim who would stick with saying the mass line of overthrowing the whole exploitative system of labour. Instead, I became an employment lawyer.
At work, I visited sheltered workshops, places where people with severe disabilities were supported in the most simple of tasks: folding small paper boxes, sorting donated clothing, putting a certain number of screws in containers. Some of the employees had worked there for more than four decades, doing the exact same thing day in and day out. The workshops were beautiful austere spaces, every corner cleaner and neater than our entire house in Braybrook. As I visited these places, Mum lay in bed without the disability pension because her physical disabilities weren’t severe enough to warrant any compensation from anyone, and perhaps by the time they became severe enough she would have become too old to work anyway.
Now the shed no longer vibrates with its massive machine heartbeat. Red dust no longer floats out from beneath the door. But we are still not to speak of what Mum did for those two working decades of her life.
The door to the shed is still locked.
THROWING THE BOOK
The Old Man is sitting on a plastic chair outside the room, his hand resting on his wooden cane. His left leg cannot bend at the knee because an epoch ago the barefoot doctors in China gave him the wrong medicine for a minor foot injury. Now his leg sticks out in front of him and it looks as though he is trying to trip someone. He winces apologetically as people manoeuvre past. Some are pacing anxiously, fiddling with their clothes. Some are lolling wearily, as though they have been here many times before. None of them takes much notice of the Old Man.
The Uncle is here with his Niece. They came an hour early because they didn’t want to be late. When the Uncle sees the Old Man, he calls out in Mandarin and walks over to greet him, careful to avoid the leg trap. ‘Ay! Mr Zhang! Mr Zhang, so good to see you!’ The Old Man nods and smiles.
You would think they were at a reunion. You would think they were old friends. In fact, they are about to battle it out with each other in the courts of the new country. More accurately, their advocates – the family members who speak English – are about to battle it out for them in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
‘Case No. 54365 – Zhang v. Newtone Electronics,’ someone calls out, and the Uncle recognises the name of his business. ‘Ay,’ he nudges the Niece, ‘is that us? Are they calling for us?’ The Niece nods, and the Uncle helps the Old Man to his feet while she hands him his walking stick. Together, they walk the Old Man to the room, lead him to the empty seat beside his Son-in-Law, and then take their places on the opposite side of the room. The Son-in-Law, a towering pink megaphone for his softly spoken in-laws, glowers at his wife: ‘Doesn’t your old man realise that they’re the other side? Why’s he getting so friendly with them?’ The Old Man is silent, waiting for the hearing to begin.
‘Just because they have a white son-in-law they think they can sue the hell out of us,’ the Uncle told his Niece when he first appealed to her for help. ‘Ungrateful Australians. Zhang bought that DVD player for his daughter. I know she and the white devil egged him on.’ The Niece is a law student, in her second year. She has been practising law for her family members since she was sixteen: writing letters of complaint, deciphering employment contracts, submitting tenders. But this will be her first time in court.
Under the Fair Trading Act 1999, the fee to take a claim of less than $10,000 to the VCAT is $34.20. ‘Such a small sum!’ railed the Uncle when the VCAT notice first arrived. ‘No wonder so many want their day in court.’ For $34, anyone can experience Justice the democratic way. The Uncle believes this is why his Asian customers are so eager to take him to the tribunal. They are free, and by the blessed Buddha, they will sue each other for all it’s worth. In a democracy, there is always someone to blame.
The Uncle
shares their faith in this marvellous system. He knows that in this new country, everything is organised to be rational and fair and good, to remedy people who aren’t. ‘Do you think they would do this to a white man?’ he exclaimed as they drove to the tribunal. ‘Oh no, they would never try this at Harvey Norman. If the white guys at Myer tell them that they can’t get a refund, then that’s the end of the matter. But me, I’m just a Phnom Penh peasant, fresh off the boat – no harm in throwing a phonebook at me.’
Some disputes can be settled out of court. The day before the hearing, a different Chinese customer came into the Uncle’s shop. Waving an ad from the local newspaper, he demanded the mobile phone in the window for $99.
‘But that phone costs over $200,’ implored the Uncle.
‘Your ad says $99!’
‘It says mobile phones from $99! I can’t sell you that one for $99.’
‘Ay, you shifty Chinese-Cambodians!’ the customer shouted, picking up the Yellow Pages from the counter and lobbing it at the Uncle’s head.
As the Uncle ducked, he recalled a passage from the franchise manual: The customer is always right. Never lose your temper on the shop floor. He picked up the phonebook, put it back on the counter and turned solicitously to the fuming customer.
‘Go to Crazy John’s,’ he proffered. ‘Go and throw something at him. Go and molest another Telstra dealer. We all have the same ad.’
The customer marched out, turning to have the last word before he left. ‘You’re lucky I don’t take you to the tribunal!’
As they wait for the hearing to begin, the Niece reads over the documents once more. Question 11 asks the applicant to Outline the history of the dispute. Attach extra sheets if you need more space. Only five lines are provided on the form, but Mr Zhang’s daughter has attached two extra pages of pain and suffering caused by the malfunctioning DVD player. Who can fit into five little lines their heart-rending history of corporate exploitation? You’d have to do it in haiku.
When the Tribunal Member enters the room, all stand up respectfully and turn to see what Justice looks like. He is a tired-looking man with greying hair. He sits at the front of the room, behind a raised desk, and signals wearily for them to sit down.
Standing up to speak for the Old Man, the Son-in-Law begins an indignant speech. The phrases ‘dodgy goods’, ‘buggered up’ and ‘ripped off’ occur several times, often in the same sentence. But the Tribunal Member cuts him off. He has witnessed this scene many times before; each tirade is identical to the last except for minor details of fact. The Member leafs through the application and sums up the two pages of woe in three sentences. Then, in shorthand, he states the law in relation to the matter, for the edification of all parties: ‘The DVD player did not do what it was supposed to do – that is, play DVDs.’
It is the Niece’s turn. She has studied Section 74D of the Trade Practices Act. She knows she has to prove that the DVD player was of merchantable quality when it was sold. She wants to explain that faulty discs inserted into the player might have caused it to malfunction. She also wants to point out that some DVD players can only play discs from certain zones. But when she stands up to speak, she finds that she has soaked up her parents’ fear of authority. Her carefully rehearsed case comes out as two awkward sentences, speeding to a small smash of silence. This is not how she imagined her courtroom debut.
Her two pithy sentences have not convinced the Tribunal Member. He declares that the information is immaterial, and that the goods did not do what they were supposed to. Therefore the applicants are entitled to a full refund.
‘But we offered four times to fix it for them because it was still under warranty!’ exclaims the Uncle. ‘But they would have none of it! You must tell him that the DVDs they were playing were illegal. How dare they sue us when they were breaking the law!’
The Niece begins to translate, but the Tribunal Member has already made his decision. There are many other claims to be heard and judgements must be made quickly. A $34 fee does not warrant an hour-long stint in the judicial system. The parties stand up as the Tribunal Member walks out of the room.
When the Member has gone, the Uncle turns to the Old Man: ‘We will write you a cheque.’
‘Thank you.’
The Uncle answers in English, ignoring the smirking Son-in-Law: ‘No worries.’ The Old Man and the Uncle shake hands and give each other small pats on the back.
‘I don’t understand how we lost,’ mutters the Uncle as they walk out of the building. ‘The only reason the machine was not playing was because they jammed it up with a chopstick, trying to get a pirate DVD out. It was a good one too, a Panasonic.’ The Uncle looks to the Niece for an explanation, for the complex legal reasoning behind the decision. All she can say is, ‘The judge must not own a DVD player.’
‘Don’t worry,’ says the Uncle, ‘you did well. And Mr Zhang got his $34 worth – I guess it’s true, the customer is always right. But all is not lost. We’ll get the broken player fixed, hook it up to one of the display TVs and play the Tiger Soya-Milk Maker demonstration DVD on it.’
‘Who’d want to buy a soya-milk maker?’ asks the Niece sceptically.
‘Ah. The Old Man,’ says the Uncle. ‘He’ll come back to get one next week.’
‘Do you really think he’ll come back?’ asks the Niece.
‘Of course. Of course he’ll come. He needs to collect his cheque. And you can’t get one of those things from the white guys at Harvey Norman.’
HOME TRUTHS
Ah Gong is ninety-eight years old. Twenty years ago, he dug up his whole suburban backyard until it was only a field of soil. He built two rainwater tanks, and planted rows of vegetables – turnips, cabbages, onions – as well as an olive tree. Ten years ago, he was still farming his land. Ah Mah was twelve years younger. ‘Old man,’ she’d shout, because he was deaf in one ear, ‘did you let loose on the carpet again?’ But she always cleaned up after his stomach upsets. She also sewed all their clothes, right down to their underwear – heavy knitted polyester in dirt browns and navy blues and greys – until she couldn’t anymore because of the arthritis. Sometimes they would fight. She’d take a hoe to his bok choy; in revenge, he’d hide the jar of Nescafé.
Two years ago, Ah Gong was sent to a nursing home. ‘It’s because you two fight too much,’ his children told him, when it was really because they thought he was too frail to be in his garden. They’d tried having him in each of their homes, but were alarmed when they came home from work and discovered him outside, digging or trying to scale a stepladder, always itching to go back to his own land. He was almost deaf. He couldn’t hear the phone. He was losing his sense of balance.
Ah Gong’s children found him a light-filled nursing home in an outer suburb, clean and bright, serving three-course meals that included mung-bean soup and jasmine tea. The website said that the home celebrated cultural diversity, but none of the carers could sing the Teochew opera he loved. Every Monday, a Filipino carer soulfully belted out classics like ‘Morning Has Broken’ and ‘Over the Rainbow’ to the assortment of Teochew, Hakka, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Cantonese and Hokkien residents arranged in a semicircle in the living room. Another earnest carer danced and encouraged the residents to clap along, sometimes by taking their hands in hers. Some indignantly withdrew their limbs, some cheerfully applauded, while others resigned themselves to being benign geriatric muppets.
The carers all call him Ah Gong, which means grandfather. They call another resident Bà, Vietnamese for grandmother. The carers might be ‘Asian’, but Asia is a big part of the world, so they could be Filipino, Taiwanese or Indonesian. Ah Gong can’t speak English, and they can’t speak his dialect. The European equivalent would be a home filled with Latvians, Slovenians and Moldovans attended to by Greek, Spanish and Irish nurses, doctors and carers. The staff are attentive but busy, solicitous but overworked.
‘Boss, boss, why do you ignore me?’ laments a Cantonese grandmother, to the departing back of a uniform
. He could be Indian or Sri Lankan, she doesn’t know the difference; and he doesn’t realise she’s speaking to him. She turns back to the baby doll she has in her arms, patting its soft limbs and plastic head with blinking long-lashed eyes, and cooing at it. Every evening at mealtime, a cheery woman comes to spoonfeed her mother a dinner she has prepared at home.
Ah Gong remembers, eighty years ago in China, how he slept away his days, emptied of energy and starving. The lucky ones never woke up. But one of his cousins had just returned from abroad. That cousin saved his life, dragged his still-breathing skeleton onto a boat bound for Cambodia. He worked for a decade in the backs of kitchens, not knowing if he’d ever get married, until one day a friend said to him, ‘I know a really good hard-working girl. Would you like to meet her?’
When Ah Mah also moves into the nursing home, the two are shifted to a twin room with a flat-screen television and an enormous ensuite. At meal time in the dining room, there is a feast in front of them: rice porridge, egg custard, leafy green soup, Chinese cups with lids to keep beverages warm, chopsticks and big plastic soup spoons. Wordlessly, Ah Gong hands Ah Mah a folded tissue from his shirt pocket. Ah Mah swaps her jasmine tea for his water.
Their granddaughter comes to visit, and Ah Mah laments, ‘Oh, if only I had my rice cooker still, I would make dinner for you!’
‘I can’t recognise any of you now,’ says Ah Gong, ‘because none of you come and visit often! Tell your mum to take me home, or the only way I will be out of here is when I am dead on my back!’ They’d never expected to grow old surrounded by strangers.