Alana Oakley (7 page)

But all the extra work had taken its toll, and Emma was physically and emotionally exhausted. The upcoming ‘date' with Dr Gray added more weight on her shoulders: she hadn't had a ‘date' date in years. The need for respite led her to King Street, with all its delicious distractions: vintage shops, curios, quirky fashion, coffee and sweet delicacies from the four corners of the globe. Emma stopped outside the futon shop and peered in. The artwork, ‘Sleeping Beauty', looked so tranquil, and the beds inside so inviting, she couldn't resist taking a peek. On impulse, she decided to enter. After all, she
could
do with a new daybed in her office. Noodle-the-Penguin had left too many souvenirs that couldn't be got rid of without industrial-strength bleach.

Emma tried the first futon. It was large and firm and was said to be ‘good for backs'. “Too hard,” she decided.

Emma tried the second futon. It was not as large and very squishy, perfect for ‘snuggling', according to the sign. “Too soft,” she said.

Emma tried the third futon. It was the same size as her daybed at home and gave slightly when she pushed on its surface. “Ahh, just right,” she sighed. Her eyes closed, she adjusted her weight, shimmied into a comfortable position and … with the help of the painkiller she had swallowed for her tooth ache, fell asleep.

Although three bears
should
have come in at this point and pointed at Emma, shrieking, “There she is!” this is not what happened. Instead, Alana turned to the shopkeeper, whose bald head was as shiny as a bowling ball.

“Do you deliver?” she asked.

CHAPTER 11

Lost in translation

The first few classes of Mandarin covered the language's four tones and basic vocabulary. Alana was amazed by the sing-song cadences, which had syllables sliding down slippery dips, bouncing on trampolines, ascending to the sky and hovering in the air. Say ‘
ma
' using the wrong tone and you could be calling your mother a horse instead! Alana's partner for conversational Chinese was Miller. Miller never volunteered an answer and, if he was called upon to contribute, he mumbled or stared into space. Miss Wu reacted, first with patience, anger, and then she gave up. Miller, to all intents and purposes, was like wallpaper – there, but not really noticeable.

Jing Ren's and Jaey's presentation on ‘Introductions' was Alana's first warning that something might be wrong.

“N
Ä­
h
ǎ
o. W
ǒ
de míngzì shì Jing Ren. N
Ä­
jiào shénme míngzì?” Jing Ren said with confidence. (Hi. My name is Jing Ren. What's your name?)

Jaey replied, “N
Ä­
h
ǎ
o, Jing Ren. W
ǒ
de míngzì shì Jaey. H
ě
n g
ā
oxìng jiàn dào n
Ä­
.” (Hi, Jing Ren. My name is Jaey. Nice to meet you.)

“W
ǒ
láizì M
ǎ
láix
Ä«
yà. N
Ä­
cóng n
ǎ
l
Ä­
lái?” Jing Ren responded. (I'm from Malaysia. Where are you from?)

“W
ǒ
láizì M
ǎ
láix
Ä«
yà shì y
ě
.” Jaey said with a smile. (I'm from Malaysia, also.)

“Nà h
ě
n bàng! W
ǒ
zài ji
ē
lìng y
Ä«
gè M
ǎ
láix
Ä«
yà de péngy
ǒ
u h
ē
k
ā
f
ē
i. N
Ä­
xi
ǎ
ng ji
ā
rù w
ǒ
men ma?” Jing Ren said, struggling slightly with the long sentence. (That's great! I'm meeting another Malaysian friend for coffee. Would you like to join us?)

“Xièxiè. W
ǒ
xi
ǎ
ng ji
ā
rù n
Ä­
men.” Jaey said with another grin. (Thank you. I would like to join you.)

Alana glanced at her notes, which looked and sounded vastly different. The class had been asked to come up with their own translations for a script based on the common theme: ‘An invitation', so everybody's
would
be different, she reasoned.

She tried to ignore the alarm bells ringing in her brain. She had been assisted by Ling Ling, and surely she would know her Mother Tongue. Casting her mind back to Ling Ling's animated demonstration of the script, Alana mentally rehearsed all the tips she had been shown. According to Ling Ling, the four distinct tones of the language were just the beginning. There was flouncing, batting of the eyes, and hip-holding, too. “Like the French feminine and masculine, but more overt?” Alana had enquired. Ling Ling's answering cough could have meant anything.

Jing Ren and Jaey sat down while the class clapped politely.

“Alana and Miller,” Miss Wu announced. The Mandarin teacher sat ramrod straight. Her face was as round as a peach and her skin flawless. She had the kind of hair used for shampoo commercials – silky, straight and long – that hung to her waist. She nodded her head at Alana like a Chinese Empress consenting for court to proceed.

“N
Ä­
h
ǎ
o, Alana,” said Miller. (Hi, Alana.)

Alana replied, “Leiho bo?” with a friendly wave. (How are you doing?)

Miss Wu winced.

“W
ǒ
h
ě
n h
ǎ
o, n ne?” Miller mumbled. (I'm fine, and you?)

“Okay, loh.” Alana remembered to push Miller playfully on the shoulder. “Wah seh, you so stylo milo today. You got pak toh izzit? (I'm okay. Wow, you look very stylish/fashionable today. Have you got a date?) Alana flicked her hair, batted her eyes, and put her hands on her hips.

Miller, taken aback by this sudden show of femininity, stuttered a thank-you. “Xièxiè.”

Alana ignored the sound of Miss Wu's teeth snapping together and ploughed on. “Who izzit? Who izzit? I know her one, or not?” (Who is it? Who is it? Do I know her?)

Miller, unsure of what Alana was talking about, continued blindly.

Miller: “W
ǒ
men yìq
Ä­
ch
Ä«
w
ǔ
fàn.””(Let's have lunch.)

Alana: “Can … can. Tài h
ǎ
o leh … you belanjar
?
” (Sure, we can do that. Great … your treat, right?) Ling Ling had been most emphatic about including this. Never go out, she warned, without deciding who was picking up the tab. When Alana protested, saying it sounded rude, Ling Ling had pushed her objections off the cliff.

Miller was relieved that their presentation was over. “H
ǎ
o ba, w
ǒ
men z
ǒ
u ba.” (Okay, let's go.) Alana turned to see the Mandarin teacher's face, no longer a subtle peach, more a livid beetroot. “What are you speaking?” Miss Wu asked, appalled.

“Umm, modern Mandarin?” Alana replied uncertainly.

“No, no, no. This is not Mandarin. This is an abomination!”

Alana's original hunch had been correct. She should
never
have taken up the offer from her mad-cap ‘aunt'. But Auntie Ling Ling later defended her decision to teach Alana ‘Singlish' – Singapore English – on social grounds. Singlish, she explained, was extremely useful when you wanted to hang out with friends, go shopping or order food. It was a fusion of English, all four Chinese languages (Hokkien, Cantonese, Mandarin and Teochew), Malay and even Punjabi, reflecting the diverse, colourful blend of cultures living there. “Wah seh, how you expect to pick up boys with: ‘Hi. My name is Alana. What's your name'? I mean, like, bo-ring!” she fake-yawned. “So obiang! Old fashion, lah, all that formal Mandarin.”

“I'm not supposed to be picking up boys!” Alana fumed.

“Eh, I'm trying to make education more exciting, okay?” huffed Ling Ling, who slipped into more slang on the rare occasions she got angry. “And
practical
.” She aimed a pointed look at Emma, who shrugged. “An zhua? (What's your problem?) You yaya papaya (arrogant) orready, (already) lah. Now you know more than me, dowan (don't want) my help. But I tell you,” Ling Ling wagged a warning fingernail of shimmering bronze, “learn proper way, where got fun one? Soo stoopid, you kuku-bird!” She grumbled under her breath. Ling Ling, her Singlish and her pick-up lines disappeared in a blur of shimmery chiffon.

The next morning it was doubly frustrating when the school administrator did not transfer Alana to Malay as soon as she put in the request.

“Please, please, please,” she begged, “I
have
to do Malay.” She searched for a valid excuse and found nothing. “I'm desperate.”

Mrs Machlin shook her head. “That's not a good enough reason, Alana.”

“Well no, I know, but … I really, really, really have to transfer!” she insisted, lowering her voice. Her eyes skittered. She had just noticed Someone Else in the office.

Mrs Machlin caught the panicked glance Alana shot Flynn and instantly drew the wrong conclusion. “I … see. Desperate to ‘learn Malay', huh?”

“I'm not … it's not because of …” Alana protested, but this only confirmed Mrs Machlin's suspicions.

“It's alright, Sweetie,” she whispered loudly. “I used to have a crush on Johnny Pike. He was as cute as a button. A bit of a ‘bad boy' too,” she added. Alana wanted to D-I-E! “Lucky for you it's the beginning of Term. Here,” Mrs Machlin said, handing Alana a piece of paper, “this is your amended timetable. Good luck with ‘Malay'!” she said with an exaggerated wink.

Alana left before Mrs Machlin could do or say anything more to embarrass her. But she did risk one last look over her shoulder and caught Flynn's eye. His waggling eyebrows said it all. Naturally, after yesterday, Flynn would assume she was ‘desperate' to transfer to his class because of
him
. Alana left the office seething.

CHAPTER 12

Dating for Dummies

Alana knew her mum had a soft spot for animals, but even she was amazed when Emma, with a screech, stopped her from squashing a cockroach.

“Watch out! That's Harry!”

“Harry?” Alana repeated, confused.

“Or it could be Leo. It's hard to tell.”

Harry-or-Leo showed no sign that he was facing death. In fact he showed no fear at all. If Alana didn't know better, it looked like the insect was waving his antennae in a gesture of welcome, in a “Hey, whassup? Make yourself at home” -kind of way. Any minute now he would offer them a beverage and light a cigarette. After all, if predictions about who would survive the end of the world were to be believed, this was
his
house,
his
world … humans were merely temporary tenants. Alana shooed the bug away. It moved off with a reluctant scrabble.

“You're feeding it?” she accused her mum, holding a container of organic waste at eye-level, twisting it round and round. Mushy leaves of week-old spinach melded with apple cores, potato peelings, soggy beetroot and limp carrots. Rude protrusions grew from knobby vegetable cuts as they squatted in the putrefying mass.

“Not really,” Emma said, looking momentarily guilty before becoming distracted again.

“You know, if you don't put food scraps in the compost, they turn into a biohazard,” Alana told her mum, whose sole response was a vague, “Uh huh.”

“And gkjkdgj.”

“Yes.”

“And did you know sfhnaorfkh?”

“Really?”

“I knew it! You're doing it again, Mum. You're not listening!” Alana glared at her mother, who was still in her nightie, hair un-brushed, searching frantically under furniture on her hands and knees. Alana tamed her hair with a combination of sheer willpower and extra-strong gel, while Emma – like the strays she used to save – allowed hers to grow wild and roam free.

“Of course I listen, Clever-Clogs. I've just got this awful deadline and I can't remember where I put my writing,” Emma said, checking under the toaster and behind a pot plant for a missing piece of paper. Alana's mum, as a freelance journalist, got to do really amazing things sometimes, like interview rock stars like Slam Guru and people like Cristina Ibrahmovic, who had brought gymnastics to underprivileged children. But when she wrote up these interviews she usually did them on whatever was handiest: paper napkins, telephone bills, even cereal boxes. The 1930s semi-detached terrace which Emma and Alana called home was long, narrow and dark, which made it even more difficult to find the random pieces of paper upon which Emma wrote her ideas.

“She's feeding it!” Alana said to no-one in particular. If she was honest, these expostulations were directed at her dad, for only Hugo would believe that Emma was nurturing cockroaches or had misplaced her writing.
Again.
Only he would understand Alana's frustration. Alana had an important soccer match coming up, class tests, now TWO torture-obsessed teachers, and Flynn-the-Fraud who her friends couldn't stop talking about. And if all that wasn't enough to cope with, home-grown toxic waste as well! “Worry-wart,” she heard him chuckle in her head. “Oh, yeah?” she responded. “And I bet my birthday (horror of inevitable horrors) is going to be another Big Fiasco.” “Big Heart,” Hugo reminded her. If she concentrated
really
hard, she could almost feel him give a playful yank on her hair.

“
Ah ha!
” Emma exclaimed happily. “Microwave! It got wet. I had to dry it and …” she opened the door and retrieved a scrap of paper covered in blurry ink, “…
da dah!
” This time, it was a junk-mail envelope. “Yes! Here it is!” She waved it in triumph. “Oww!” she said suddenly, clutching her jaw.