by S. L. Lim
He spoke with such courage and simplicity I couldn’t help feeling some envy. I was also unnerved, scared, even, although fear might be too strong a word. It unsettled me to see just how certain he was, and what a contrast this made to my own unholy vacillation. Even as I admired his strength I hoped, with such intensity it pained me, that Tony would come to his senses and retreat from all this crap. Surely he would do that any day now. He would swap his lay-preaching for something unthreatening and useful, like being a civil engineer. After all, the world needs those. He would build bridges and railways, have meetings with architects, stop buildings from falling over. He would be an artist of the physical world, and questions of ideology need not enter into it.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
What started it was Matty, of course. The weird thing was that it began as an unusually pleasant morning. They had both taken the day off, Benjamin because the gym was closed for renovations, and Andie because she had woken up and found herself to be physically and mentally incapable of going to the café where she was planning to Google things in an intermittently productive manner. Benjamin cooked breakfast for the two of them: eggs and tomatoes in a pan, buttered toast and coffee. It looked like breakfast in a cartoon about happy breakfasting.
‘How was last night?’ she asked him neutrally. There had been some kind of cricket-related gathering at the pub. Andie had pleaded exhaustion, although it was hardly worth the effort of inventing an alibi. They both knew how she felt about cricket.
‘Oh, it was fun. Some of Matty’s relatives were there. If you think Matty’s a rich bogan, gawd, you should see some of that lot.’ Benjamin shook his head. ‘Matty’s uncle’s a surgeon, which is pretty cool. He does orthopaedics, so we had a good talk about some of the injuries he sees in his work. Kind of overlaps with some of the exercise programs we’ve been trying to set up. He’s a bit of a dinosaur, though. Not exactly politically correct.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘Well, you know that crowd. They’re a fairly blokey lot. Apparently they’re all like that in surgery. Anyway, Matty’s uncle was telling us all about this thing he does with the new female trainees. He does it really subtly. He waits until they’ve got the face masks on for the surgery, and when they try to speak to him he says, “I can’t hear you!” So he leans in, and they lift the mask up, and then he can see them close up and decide how pretty they are.’
‘How very charming.’
‘Yeah, that’s what I thought. Anyway, one day this plan of his backfired. The girl lifted her mask up, and it turned out she was Asian. So the surgeon went like this –’ Benjamin mimed drawing back in utter horror. ‘“For the love of God, put it back on! Put the mask back on!”’
The feeling Andie experienced was not disapproval, or even anger. Rather, her response was one of simple physical revulsion. ‘That’s disgusting,’ she said. The words were blunt and clichéd, it was true, but then so was the anecdote. There was simply no more accurate way of describing the situation.
‘Yeah, it is. That’s why I said he’s a dinosaur.’ Benjamin shook his head in a brisk, jovial way, as if to say that the unfortunate subject had been mutually appraised and was now dealt with. He reached for the jar and added a spoon of sugar to his coffee. ‘Aren’t you hungry?’
Andie stared at her plate. ‘That’s disgusting,’ she said again, slowly. ‘I can’t believe people still behave like that. Who is this guy?’
She expected Benjamin to agree with her. To her surprise, however, he seemed uncomfortable – shifty, even. ‘Oh, come on,’ he said. ‘I know it’s not great, but it’s not that bad.’
‘I thought you just said that it was.’
‘Well, yeah. Of course I don’t agree with it.’ His voice sounded weirdly deeper. ‘But, you know, it was just a joke. You can’t expect to be protected from every little thing in life.’
‘What do you mean?’
Still Benjamin would not meet her eye. He glanced around the walls, avoiding her gaze. ‘I mean, what I’m saying is, it’s not really that big of a deal. Everyone gets made fun of sometimes. You can’t expect to be immune, just because …’ He shook his head. ‘OK, look, why are you making an issue of this? What are you getting angry at me for?’
‘I wasn’t getting angry with you.’ She breathed in. ‘What did you say to Matty’s uncle?’
‘Oh, you know. I just told him the joke was, you know. Kind of a blast from the past … come on, we don’t have to talk about this. Hurry up and eat your food before it goes cold.’ He angled the plate towards her.
She pushed the plate aside without looking at it. ‘I don’t understand …’ she began, and then broke off. ‘What did Matty think about this story?’
‘He thought it was pretty funny, I guess. You know how Matty is.’
‘Unfortunately I do.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ Benjamin shook his head wearily. ‘You know, I just brought it up because I thought you would want to know. I was just being honest. Now I wish I hadn’t even started this. It’s like you’re punishing – it’s got nothing to do with me.’
Andie looked down at her coffee. She felt mildly dizzy, as if the oxygen had been drawn out of the room. ‘I wish you’d said something,’ she said, aware even as she spoke that the words didn’t quite match what she was trying to convey.
‘Oh, come on. What was I supposed to say?’
‘I don’t know. You could have said you didn’t like it. That it’s not OK to speak like that. That it wasn’t … cool.’ How juvenile the words sounded, even to herself. How juvenile the whole experience.
Benjamin went tsssh. He made a gesture as if grasping the string of an airborne balloon, trying to hold on to his patience. ‘Yes, but don’t you see – it was a social event. There were a lot of people. Matty’s parents were there. I couldn’t just … it would have ruined the whole afternoon.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘You actually want that, don’t you? You want me to be uncomfortable.’ He looked truly wounded. ‘Well, good to know that’s how little you care about my feelings.’
‘I never said I wanted …’
‘Yes, but it’s what you think. Look, this is what happened: Matty’s uncle made a joke which wasn’t totally PC, which Matty thought was funny –’
‘A racist joke –’
Benjamin drew himself up to his full seated height. ‘Matty is not a racist. He is not. He would never discriminate against someone because of the colour of their skin. He has Asian friends.’ He looked positively shocked, as if it was outrageous of her even to suggest such a notion.
Andie closed her eyes. When she opened them Benjamin was still there. He seemed to be stopping himself from rolling his eyes with the greatest difficulty. ‘What I don’t get is why you’re so angry. I mean, why do you even care? How is this any of your business?’
She looked at him in disbelief. ‘Because I’m Asian?’
‘No, you’re not – you’re a white person.’ The simple clarity of the statement took her breath away. Seeing her look of shock, Benjamin added impatiently, ‘Not physically, of course. I’m not blind. I’m not talking about skin colour.’ He said ‘skin colour’ as if this was a self-evidently moronic subject to remark on. ‘You’re not white biologically, but you were brought up in a white cultural environment. Really, you’re white. That’s why I don’t get why you’re so outraged about this. None of this has anything to do with you.’
A strange sensation went through Andie’s body, seeping from her chest down to her toes, and it took a moment for her to identify it as utter humiliation. That her own identity could be stripped from her and handed to someone else – or rather, to a version of herself she did not recognise. A deracinated version. The strangest thing of all, she realised, was that Benjamin wasn’t even trying to hurt her. He was merely being honest, describing the world how he saw it. He respected her enough, her intelligence and fundamental toughness, to tell her the truth without censoring himself, and the truth was this: all good th
ings must emanate from white people. She, Andie, was someone he loved and thought highly of – ergo, she must be white. It was an entirely circular argument, and thus closed off to refutation. What could she possibly say to that? It was like arguing with a fish about gravity.
‘I wish you’d said something,’ she said at last, aware that she was repeating herself. Aware, too, that it didn’t really matter to her what Benjamin had said in the moment, or even if he’d said anything at all. What she really meant was I wish that you understood. I wish that you knew what I know with my whole body.
‘I already told you, it was a social event! Anyway, what would that have achieved? I don’t see why I have to start a fight with my friends just so that you can prove some point. If I’d spoken up, it would have been uncomfortable. It would have made things weird between me and Matty. Don’t you even – I mean, do you even acknowledge that at all?’
Andie could feel the heat building up behind her eyeballs. ‘Now that you mention it, no. I do not give a shit about your relationship with your stupid friends in this situation.’
‘Well, that’s good to know. Tells me something about what you must think of me.’
She tried for a conciliatory tone. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say I didn’t care.’ Black is white, war is peace. Why do I have to be the one to apologise? ‘I wish you would think about these issues more, that’s all. Some of the … assumptions that you have.’
Benjamin clenched his fists in exasperation. ‘You don’t want me to think about my assumptions. I hate how you pretend I have a choice. What if I have thought about them? Is that the only possible reason I might disagree with you? You want to cut out all the thoughts in my head that you don’t like, and replace them with your own. Can you accept you might not be right about every single thing in the universe?’ He shook his head incredulously. ‘It’s like being bullied, that’s what it is. It’s bullying.’
Andie looked at him incredulously. ‘Are you saying that I’m the one who’s bullying you?’
‘Yes, you are! I can’t speak freely – not even to my own friends. I have to walk round on eggshells all the time because of your paranoid racism hunting. I mean, I know that it’s difficult – for you, all this race stuff is personal –’
‘And it’s not personal for you?’ Andie laughed in wonderment. ‘No, you’re completely objective. You don’t have a point of view. You don’t have colour. You –’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ Benjamin flung up his hands. ‘This is just stupid. Just because the facts don’t fit with your theory doesn’t mean you have to twist everything I say. You want to make me out to be this great big racist –’
‘What fucking facts? Stop putting words in my mouth! I never even said you were a racist, and now you’re all –’
‘Ha-ha-ha! What the hell are you getting so worked up about, then? What the hell are we talking about?’ Benjamin looked at his hands, and found that they were shaking. ‘Stop lying! Stop pretending! That’s what’s so hypocritical about all of this! You pretend to be so open-minded, but every other sentence out of your mouth is about how I’m a dirty, dirty racist. Oh, you don’t say it, but you imply it – it’s right there between the lines. And then you act all surprised when I get angry. You go on and on about colonialism and this and that and how oppressed you are. No-one actually cares. Do you know how boring you are? Do you know I find it difficult to stay conscious while you’re speaking?’ He stood up to leave.
Andie ran behind him and grabbed his shoulder, wrenching him backwards, so that he stumbled. A chair fell over, clattering hard with its legs in the air.
‘Will you take your hands off me?’
She heard the clash of metal on metal as the gate closed behind him. The finality of the sound enraged her. If she could not wound him, at least in his absence she could hurt his things. She picked up his mug and flung it to the floor, where it exploded in a spectacular shower of ceramic. Then she reached for his knitted wool jumper, found some loose strands and yanked, again and again, until the wool unmade itself into a fraying misshapen pile. It felt good to do violence to these objects, but it was not enough. She wanted to hurt Benjamin himself: his infuriating face, the deceptive solidity of his body. She wanted to commit murder – not against him, but the small angry beast of refusal which nestled in his brain. Wanted to hunt it down and scream forever in its ear.
Something she realised now: she had never truly respected her husband. Always, always she had refused to see him as he really was. She had clung to the parts of him that she loved, his loyalty and honesty, and had worked hard to convince herself the other parts were just superficial, leftover opinions from a parochial upbringing. She thought that these opinions were separable from his self; that he would put them aside when she presented him with alternative arguments. She saw now that this was a fundamentally disrespectful attitude. All along, she should have done him the courtesy of believing that he meant just what he said. He was her husband, after all. He was entitled to that much.
Now she had finally listened to him, and she knew that their marriage was over. The truth of it settled like a crow on her shoulder: the ugly feet, the hollow weight. She had imagined this so many times, but had not believed that the day would come. Now there was no alternative. Regardless of intent, he was not capable of thinking differently – such a change would do violence to his sense of self. And she wasn’t capable of forgiving him. It wasn’t even a question of right and wrong, or even of volition: it was a physical thing, a question of repellent chemical properties. Superman and kryptonite. One substance couldn’t help but be poisonous to the other.
Decolonial love, Andie thought. As if there was ever any such thing. In novels and movies, romantic love is prescribed as the great levelling force. There is no such thing as colour when you’re kissing or fucking or holding hands. What they don’t tell you is that you may be loved, worshipped and adored, but the price of admission, of the cuddles and sex and companionship, is your dignity. All that is good or accomplished in you will be ascribed to whiteness: you are a mirror whose function is to flatter him and his kind. Decolonial love. Don’t make me laugh.
And then other ones, the ones who disagree, who nominally take our side - this is how it is with all of them, Andie thought. If the woman who abused me in the street and whoever put up that Confederate flag ever get their shit together, get organised, where will my white friends be? They can’t even stick up for me when someone tells a dumbfuck joke. Where would they be if there were torches? Where would they be if there were guns?
It’s not that we think it’s probable, exactly, that any given white person is going to turn on us. But we know that they could, and that some of them want to. Our safety, then, is contingent on some mixture of white apathy and good will. But their safety is not contingent on our good will. Their access to friendship and care is not contingent on their silence. White people are scared that we will make them feel awkward; we are scared that they will smash our windows, beat us up and take our stuff. Therefore we are not equal, the material basis of our relationship cannot be equal. How can one love freely and equally under such circumstances?
Your care is worth so little, Andie thought. Your love which fails at the first hurdle. I will tell you the truth, for once. I will tell you the fucking truth.
Benjamin, scowling and walking rapidly, felt the anger receding from his body. There was a hard shape of guilt sinking into his gut. He had a sense that he was wrong without knowing why, and this knowledge of his ignorance made him want to double down and cling to his opinions even harder. Even as he despised Andie, her aggression and intransigence, he feared that as usual she was right. He hated her for having read more books, for thinking more and thinking first, before he had. There could not be room for the tiniest doubt – he needed to fortify his rage, to replay the hundred small and larger hurts that she had dealt him. He could not allow it, this feeling he had done something unforgivable, and would never even know what it was. He was n
ot capable of knowing; he deserved what he got. He would spend the rest of his life in a room half-lit and full of shadows.
You live with a person, you wake up beside them these many years, and your love becomes a habit, wrought on your very DNA. There must have been a reason you first chose this person and nobody else. But you barely remember it now; while the circumstances are still clear in your mind, the emotions which surrounded them are not. Yet here you are, marked by all that has happened, the habit of love written into the very substance of your being. You can’t break out of it now, even though with hindsight it looks like it was all a bad idea. Even if, now you come to think about it, there was no real reason to begin at all.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Daisy had always known that if her son died, so would she. It was not that suicide had ever crossed her mind. Physically she was a fthreatcoward and had no love for the idea of self-slaughter. She simply could not imagine existing in a world without Tony. It would be like trying to live in a world without water – without carbon dioxide, rocks or trees. It was a pitifully dependent relationship to have with another human being.
Once when he was in primary school, she had watched him fall from the monkey bars. She had come rushing forward, too petrified to scream, convinced she was about to find his splayed and seeping form spread across the asphalt. Instead, he was looking up at her, laughing. Holding his hand out almost with pride, so she could see the abraded flesh. The skin of his palm had turned red with friction and playground gravel. She bundled him into the car, not trusting him to the vagaries of the nurse’s office.
‘You could have been killed,’ she told him later, trying to control the trembling in her hands. She could see it as if it were happening: the body’s slow arc through space, the pointless words in the newspaper afterwards. ‘You could have broken your neck, become a paraplegic in a wheelchair. You could have broken your skull in half.’