Hard Word (23 page)

Laura

I was angry as hell at Mum at the start when I asked whether Philip – that's
my
Philip – could come to the barbecue, and she said no, she really wanted me to meet these women and she didn't want me just standing about wrapped round Philip and looking like a barber's pole.

‘Barber's pole,' I snorted back, but of course I knew what she was talking about. She'd seen me kissing Philip the day before when he called in after his cricket match and was still in his whites, and at the time I did have one leg curled around his and was wearing my red jeans, and to someone just going past my door it must have looked –

‘Peppermint stick, then,' Mum said in her bright voice. ‘If you prefer.' But I could tell from the way she was belting the cushions on the sofa – she wasn't just
plumping
them or anything, she was really
pulverizing
them – that there was no way she was going to change her mind. ‘The point is,' she said, ‘today's one day I'm really going to need your help, darling. And I can't afford to have you –'

‘
Vanishing
–' I say it for her.
‘Skiving off.

‘Every time my back is turned.'

And her back
is
turned right at that moment, so at least I can feel better by poking my tongue out at it.

Although right now, the way this barbecue's turning out, I'm actually glad she made the decision she did, and Philip couldn't come after all.

Mum, of course, has been racing round like a headless chook since about fourteen hours before dawn, getting everything ready, and you learn to keep right out of her sight at times like this because otherwise you find yourself mowing the carpet till the threads show through cos every time she passes you – even if your arms are already falling off and you're deafened by the Hoover and won't ever be able to listen to music properly again – she sees all these spots and bits you've missed and you have to do it all over again …

And this goes on till you think you can see the floorboards rising up through the carpet, and even if you finish it and empty the Hoover and sneak it back in the cupboard when you know she's just dashed out to the Mall for another hundred loaves of bread, when there are only fifteen people coming anyway, hoping she won't remember you were even hoovering in the first place – ‘Out of sight, out of mind,' as Grandma Vera used to say when she used to say things you could understand – then it hardly matters because she's got you rushing out to the yard to make sure Philip's arranged the drinks, and all kinds, not just punch and gin and wine and beer like he likes but juices and things because most of them won't drink alcohol – and that he's not just standing over the smoke of the barbecue and dreaming. And while you're at it –
‘Lau-ra
– going to find out where Grandma Vera and Katie are, and what they're up to, and why they're being so quiet and helpful instead of messing everything up as usual, and does that mean that, if they're not now, they will later when it really counts. So that by the time the barbecue starts and people are arriving, you're exhausted and only want to go and lie on your bed and sleep, and never go to another barbecue in your life. Or not one run by your mother.

Anyway, it's a lovely day, the sun's shining and all that blah, and actually I'm pleased for Mum because it obviously means so much to her, though I can't understand why because these are only her students, and if one of our teachers ever gave us a barbecue – joke! – we'd get there and they'd say, here's a glass of milk and a biscuit and go and stand over there in the corner of the yard and don't talk and while you're there, you can start on those weeds, and if you behave yourself and weed the whole garden – which'd be about forty acres – by the time it's dark, we'll give you a cold sausage to eat on your way home …

But it does – mean a lot to Mum, I mean – and she's as nervous as if she's going to have a baby or something.

The first two people to arrive are this beautiful Indian lady in a sari that's as red as red, and she's got this red spot on her forehead as well, and I could die just looking at her, and I'm going to drop piano and do that Indian dancing where you learn to turn your fingers back on themselves so you can almost scratch the back of your wrist without using your other hand. Mum says her name is Shamila, and she just smiles and looks at me, and that makes me feel just soo -, I don't know.

And next to her, who'd driven her, is this other lady, who I really like too, only she's a bit weird – and she's pretty and that, and she's dark like an indian, that's with a small
i
, but not beautiful like Shamila who's a proper Indian – and she goes … and I swear this is the way she speaks, like she's a policeman or a general or something:

‘This,' she goes, ‘is my daughter.'

And she means
me
, and Mum just breaks into peals of laughter, but the woman – and her name's Maria – she says to Mum, ‘No, I am serious. When I go home, I take this girl with me.'

‘Okay,' Mum says, ‘sure, you take her.'

And then this Maria, who comes from Chile, says to me, ‘Come here,' and the real Indian woman's still just standing there, smiling, beside us, but so perfectly still that she takes up no space at all and almost isn't there, if that makes any sense, but Maria, when I get near her, she grabs me – and all the other women, when they come, do the same. All these Turks and women in scarves and headdresses and things, all amazing colours – ‘Festival best,' Mum whispers, and
ohs
and
ahs
over each of them as they come in, and I can see she's thinking she's spent so much time on ordering Katie and me down the Mall and back, she hasn't thought about her own clothes but just put on a clean white shirt and her blue slacks and gold sandals and no make-up – when did she start wearing no make-up? – and now she's wondering if she's under-dressed, and will they be offended cos they all look as though they're expecting Princess Di, if she wasn't already dead, to show up but all of them do the same thing – to me, first, and then even to Grandma Vera and Katie when they come out of Grandma's flat to see what the noise is all about – and that is, they grab hold of you and feel and poke you all over, I'm not exaggerating, like you were a chicken in the supermarket or an avocado and they couldn't decide if you were a bit too hard or a bit too soft and had to explore every bit before they decided.

And they don't just go for your arms and neck and face and things. The first woman who did it – Maria – I thought she must be blind or something the way they put their fingers all over you, and they're going
coo coo
or
tt-tt
as they do it, and two or three at a time when the women in scarves did it, and they
are
like a lot of budgies or doves or something, and cooing
Isn't she?
and
Isn't she?
and nodding and agreeing but never saying Isn't she
what –?
and one of them, I thought she was going to put her fingers in my mouth and feel my teeth for a moment. And then they nod at each other again, and look at my legs and walk round me like I was a racehorse and they had to see if my fetlocks would last or something, and even then they don't let go but just stand there talking to someone else as if they've forgotten you even exist for the moment, but will get back to you later when they're ready, and in the meantime you can just stand there, and sometimes two of them have got hold of you at once, one by each hand, and you're taller than them already anyway but they're much heavier, and you start to feel like Samson between two pillars and try and make yourself smaller by bobbing down a bit, except you know Mum will come past and say, ‘Stand up straight, Laura, it's not good for your posture to slump.' And you can't win, and give up.

But the Asian ladies aren't like that but much quieter and take their shoes off at the door, and at first I think it's because they've seen how clean I've got the carpet, but Mum says, ‘No, they do that anyway.' Imagine taking your shoes off every time you went into Toni's house, especially if they're runners and you've just come from the gym or netball, and Toni's mother would be going, ‘What's that dreadful stink in here?'

And the other thing the Asian ladies do is, you go to say hello and suddenly all you can see is the tops of their heads, and if you bow back … there was this one girl – Mum says they're all
women
not
girls
– but one of them looks like she should be in Katie's grade, anyway I bow back to her and she's Japanese and what happens is, she bows back and it's much lower than I bowed in the first place, so I think,
God,
and bow again, and in half a minute we're under the carpet and our heads are banging on the floorboards we're bowing that low. And if they don't bow that low, they're joining their hands and just bowing their heads like they've just come back from Communion or something and still have the bread in their mouths and you don't know whether to speak yet because they might still be swallowing something, and so you both wait till their arms fall off and they become normal again and smile and say something that you kind of think is English but you can't understand a word of it and wonder what Mum has been teaching them for the last fourteen hundred years.

And Philip – I feel sorry for Philip because if you think
you've
mucked it up, Philip makes a mess of it all right from the start, and you can't help feeling a bit sorry for him because he's the only man and most of the women say hello and ignore him, and I'm sure they think he's been hired for the day – but he gets better later, and some of them like him and even start talking to him as if he was a real person like everyone else. But at the start, when he's trying to be helpful and get everybody drinks and chips and trying to find out whether they like chicken better or beef, or a few of them from the Middle East, Mum says, might like lamb, and he's asking them to see what proportions of kebabs and things to put on the barbecue, he gets himself hopelessly tangled up – like the first woman, Maria, comes out into the yard, and Philip smiles at her and he's in an apron with a fork in his hand like some ad for KFC or something equally dorkish, but he's trying and you give him credit for that, and he says to Maria:

‘Ah, now here's a lady looking for a drink.'

And this crazy woman Maria, she stops and puts one foot right forward like Miss Temple when she does the bit from Julius Caesar when Antony goes
‘Friends, Romans, countrymen
… only Maria doesn't say this but says, ‘What does it look like?' and then bursts into laughter, and poor Philip doesn't know what's going on, and I see him mouth
Jesus
and pretend the chicken's burning and rush back to the barbecue and yells over his shoulder:

‘Drinks over there, please help yourself while I look after this.'

In the end I have to rescue Maria who's still saying to herself, ‘What does it look like?' except that she says it with the emphasis on different words like, ‘What does it
look
like?' and ‘What
does
it look like?' which, when you hear it – especially the second one – sounds pretty weird.

And then this Greek woman comes out into the yard, and she's not like the others so much, she hardly smiles and she's got a face that's just like the Black-Faced Madonna on Grandma Irini's wall back at home, at my second home, I mean, in Greece, and she's carrying this plate with gladwrap over it and brings it to Philip who says, ‘Hello, and what have we here?' and pulls the gladwrap off. ‘Ah, dolmades,' he says, and then holds them out to the Greek lady and says, ‘Would you like to try one?'

And she says, ‘No, thank you, I don't like them', and goes and sits in the sun with her back to the Sandersons' fence and puts her hands in her lap almost as if she's meditating, and won't take a drink either, and I'm sure Philip's mouth says
Fuckkk
–

But then all these pretty Asian girls or women – I never know which to call them – come out, and Philip's forgotten about the Greek woman, she may as well be part of the Sandersons' fence now for all he cares, and he's racing round after the Asian girls and perving down their dresses like the fake he is, and the Japanese girl he's chasing in particular, and she's trying to get away from him, and he's coming by every second minute to fill her orange juice again and she's getting embarrassed and I see her tip half of it into Mum's zucchini patch just so she can show she's polite and drinking it, but this only brings him back with the carafe, and if she took any more her bladder'd be bursting and she'd be sitting on the toilet for the rest of the afternoon, and I wonder where on earth Philip thinks she's putting it all, in her handbag or something.

And, of course, when the first meat's cooked and Philip's totally forgotten who wanted what because he's been too busy telling Yuriko, the Japanese woman – that's her name, Yuriko – how he's always wanted to study haiku and calligraphy and Zen Buddhism … and I think,
Philip –?
Zen Buddhism –? What a fake. Zen bottoms is all he'd be interested in studying … And all this time poor Yuriko's nodding and saying ‘Ah!' and ‘Ah!' over and over till her head's about to come off and fall in the barbecue, Philip, of course, gives her the first kebab – it's chicken – and she goes:

‘No, someone else.'

But Philip insists, he claims he's cooked it specially for her, so in the end she takes it, and he waits and says, ‘Aren't you going to try it?'

And she goes, ‘Yes, of course,' and picks a bit of capsicum off the skewer and slips it between her front teeth, and says, ‘Verr-ry good.'