Behind the Moon (4 page)

‘Imagine that,’ Gillian marvelled. ‘A small world indeed!’

She nagged Bob to invite the Hos over for a barbecue lunch. He only said, ‘Give it a rest. They won’t want to come. Things were different back then.’

Tien was afraid of Bob at first. He was a thickset, redfaced man who clipped his hair military-short and snorted and stamped around his house, grizzling at everyone when his sciatica pained him. It seemed that his favourite pastime was baiting his wife. They argued constantly about things that did not matter to Tien.

One evening, when Gillian invited Tien to stay for dinner after an English lesson, she said, ‘Your father was a soldier, wasn’t he, Tien? I wonder whether he ever came across Bob. Bob was called up to be in the war, you know. They drew the marble with his birth date on it, so he went and did his duty.’

‘Bloody thanks I got for it,’ Bob grouched. He got up from the dinner table and hunched himself into his easy chair. His hand snaked around the cluttered coffee table, groping for the remote control.

‘You could have conscientiously objected, like my brother did,’ Gillian pointed out. She said to Tien, ‘I myself marched in the Sydney moratorium. We met at the Roundhouse at New South Wales uni and then we marched down George Street. It was one of the most exciting times of my life.’

Bob looked away from the footy on the TV. ‘You know what they ask you when you object?’ he said. ‘You go to court and then they ask you how you’d feel if you came home and found your sister being raped by an Asian because you didn’t do your duty. I wonder what your brother had to say to that.’

‘Bob, shush,’ Gillian said. She frowned and jerked her head in Tien’s direction. She was always alert to the slightest hint of perceived racism from Bob or anyone else. She sped to that place of hurt feelings before Tien had even lifted her foot to start the journey.

‘Don’t you shush me,’ Bob said. ‘I got a right to say what I want to say and if Tina listened, she’d learn something about this country.’

They started arguing again. Tien shifted uncomfortably. She had never heard Auntie Ai-Van or Auntie Phi-Phuong disagreeing so heatedly with their husbands. She did not know whether to be shocked at Gillian, or to admire her.

She looked down at the roast Gillian had made for dinner and tried to ignore the Gibsons. She did not want to remember Vietnam. She did not want to hear about the American war. As far as she was concerned, her life began in the refugee camp in the Philippines and even those memories were fading rapidly. In a few more years, she would finally forget everything that had happened to her and her family before they came to Australia. Maybe then she would stop grinding her teeth in her sleep at night.

Tien wanted to be like everyone else, but with Gillian Gibson it was hard to forget that she was a refugee. Gillian was a curious woman. She wanted to know about the war, about Tien’s experience as a refugee, and she was always looking out for discriminatory newspaper articles about Cabramatta—Vietnamatta, the schoolkids called it—to show Tien so that they could get upset together.

‘I’m really going to have to write to the
Herald
again,’ Gillian would say, looking annoyed and tapping the newspaper which was neatly folded open at a particular article. ‘They’ve gone too far this time with all these articles about Vietnamese crime gangs. I remember back in the seventies there were plenty of silly scruffy young lads running around in surfie gangs. It’s racist, that’s what it is.’

When Gillian said those things, she made Tien feel like a Cause, as though she was being diluted into a group she didn’t really want to belong to: the South Vietnamese who suffered during the war. Those unfortunate boat people—who did not necessarily accept Tien as one of themselves. Gillian made Tien aware of problems she didn’t want to know about, because all she wanted was to be a normal, everyday Australian. She wanted to be Bob Gibson’s ‘Tina’ who came around and played with Gibbo, learned to broaden her speech and toss in the odd slang word as she listened to Bob grouching about pollies and people in general. She wanted to be an ordinary Aussie girl who learned to cook chops and make chocolate crackles with Gillian.

‘My mother used to do this with me when I was a child,’ Gillian said to her one Saturday afternoon as they pored over a folder full of yellowing recipes together.

Tien looked at her and wondered if Gillian understood how important it was for her to do these mundane mother–daughter things with this white Australian woman. When Gillian didn’t go on and on about Vietnam and refugees, there was nobody Tien loved more. This was the woman who taught her English, tested her spelling, accompanied her to parent–teacher meetings and took her to swimming lessons with Gibbo. She sewed Tien costumes for the school musical, threw a birthday party for her, and even bought Tien her first white cotton triple A cup bra at the age of eleven. Tien wore her new bra all the time, even when she was sleeping, until it grew limp and grey. She would not take it off to let Auntie Ai-Van wash it and she got scolded for that.

A few months later, Gillian gave Tien a slightly battered copy of
Where Did I Come From?
and showed her a video—borrowed from the local library—about menstruation and sex education. It featured coltish longhaired girls asking innocent questions of their knowing older sisters and comfortably smiling mothers. It was a short film oozing oestrogen. There were female hugs and laughter and lots of butterflies and a pony in a meadow at the end. Sitting in Gillian’s bedroom watching this video, Tien dreamed about slipping her hand into the older woman’s. She longed for the intimacy of mother–daughter chats. She looked at Gillian, but she was shy and could not think of a single thing to say.

Then Gillian rewound the tape, opened her linen cupboard and gave Tien a fat pink plastic bag of bulky sanitary pads and a small floral box of tampons which, Gillian warned, were only to be used during swimming season. Tien put the pads and tampons into her backpack and hugged it to herself like a secret. It made her feel good when she went back home to Uncle Duong’s flat. She kept them in her bag and carried them to school for the next fortnight until she found a hiding place to stash her treasure. At night, she lay on her mattress on the floor and as she listened to the regular breathing of Stephanie-TiffanyMelanie deep in sleep, she thought about Gillian and silently tested the word on her lips: ‘Mum’.

One Saturday morning in early May, Tien caught a train to the Flemington markets and bought some flowers. The next day, she begged Uncle Duong to drop her off at the Gibsons’ house in Homebush. Gillian opened the door and welcomed her with a big smile when she saw the yellow chrysanthemums Tien held out to her.

‘Oh, how lovely, Tien!’

‘Happy Mother’s Day,’ Tien said. There was an awkward pause. Gillian looked at her and Tien suddenly felt she had made a terrible mistake. Perhaps this was a stranger after all; nothing more than the mother of her best friend.

Then she saw the tip of Gillian’s nose reddening with emotion. Gillian took the flowers. She bent down and hugged Tien. She hadn’t hugged anybody for such a long time, not since her son started primary school. She had not realised how much she’d missed the comfort of close contact with a child’s sturdy body. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome,’ Tien said. Silently, she added, ‘Mum.’

‘Tell you what. Why don’t you spend the day with us if your Auntie Ai-Van doesn’t mind?’

‘All right.’ And she could not remember being happier.

When Tien was thirteen her mother reappeared in her life. That was the winter Gibbo’s piano teacher, Miss Yipsoon, developed pneumonia and had to be hospitalised. Gillian brought Miss Yipsoon’s mother her meals and took her out for regular walks.

Old Mrs Yipsoon had already had one hip replacement. She lived at the top of a hill near Strathfield train station and she liked to walk down to the shopping centre, sit in the square for a while, then toddle off home. It was the return journey that took the longest time, for Mrs Yipsoon had a bad heart and that, coupled with arthritis and the dodgy hip, made the climb uphill seem interminable. Furthermore, she was a squat woman shaped like a butternut pumpkin, so it was a huge effort to haul that bulk uphill. Gillian had to push or tug her while she puffed all the way.

Tien was having her English lesson one Thursday afternoon when Gillian suddenly remembered that she could not take old Mrs Yipsoon for a walk on Friday morning because she had to go for a mammogram.

‘And I can’t take her on Saturday because Bob and I have a wedding to attend. Then my sister is coming to stay with us next week so we’ll be busy then. I won’t have the time to take her for a walk until the week after,’ Gillian said, getting up to look at the calendar which was stuck on the fridge door. ‘Poor thing. Her knees will get so stiff without the exercise.’

‘We’ll take her, Mrs Gibson,’ Tien volunteered. Immediately, Gibbo kicked her foot under the table.

‘We can’t,’ he said. ‘We’ve got exams coming up. Remember? We have to study on the weekend.’

Gillian said, ‘That’s very kind of you, Tien. But Nigel is right. You should study. I mustn’t put you kids out.’

‘It’s okay, Mrs Gibson. In Asian culture we respect the elderly and treat them with consideration,’ Tien said virtuously. ‘We can study after we come back.’

‘Crawler,’ Gibbo muttered under his breath, but she just smiled smugly.

She was uplifted by the novelty of her altruism until she, Gibbo and Mrs Yipsoon started the return journey up the steep slope.

‘One of you kids get in front of me and start pulling. The other get behind me and push,’ panted Mrs Yipsoon. ‘Go on. Push! Put some effort into it. Aaah! Stupid kids. Not so hard!’

Progress was slow. People were beginning to stare at the spectacle they made. Shopkeepers wandered out into the street to look and grin. Traffic slowed and the occasional car honked cheekily.

Then Tien was dazzled by inspiration. ‘Mrs Yipsoon,’ she said. ‘I know what’s wrong. You’re not doing it right.’

‘I’ve been walking since before you or your mother was born,’ Mrs Yipsoon snapped. ‘I’ve just about mastered it by now.’

‘No, what I mean is, you don’t have any problems going
down
hill, do you?’

‘No. Of course not. Downhill’s easy.’

‘Well then,’ Tien said triumphantly. ‘What you need to do is to fool your body into thinking you’re going downhill when you’re actually going uphill.’

‘Huh?’

‘You need to turn around and walk up the hill backwards. The knee and ankle motion will then be the same as if you’re going downhill.’

Gibbo started to make gobbling noises like a turkey. ‘Hang on, hang on,’ he started, but Tien was on a roll and she ignored him.

‘Trust me, Mrs Yipsoon,’ Tien said earnestly. ‘This is scientifically proven. I’ve seen it done before. In fact, there’s an old woman round the corner from where I live and I help her to walk backwards all the time.’

Gibbo snorted derisively. ‘Yeah, right, you dag,’ he muttered, elbowing Tien. ‘And her name is the invisible woman.’

‘Is that right?’ Mrs Yipsoon asked suspiciously, but Tien could see that she was struck by the idea.

‘Every week. Swear to god.’

‘Well, if you’re sure . . .’

A few minutes later, old Mrs Yipsoon was squawking in alarm and swatting at Tien and Gibbo with her walking cane. ‘You kids are crazy!’ she screeched. ‘You have no respect for the elderly. I’m going to ring your mothers and tell them about this. I’m going to report you to the police!’

‘But you’re making great progress,’ Tien insisted stubbornly. ‘You have to keep going.’

By now Gibbo had got into the sheer fun of making Mrs Yipsoon walk backwards. ‘Go on, Mrs Yipsoon. There’s no other way we can get you up the hill. You’re too fat otherwise.’

Mrs Yipsoon grew red-faced in alarm as they surged towards her and, to their great delight, she retreated a few steps backwards up the hill. They shouted out encouragements and whooped and danced around her. Flustered and angry, she brandished her walking stick at them while lifting her foot to take another step back. For a split-second, they caught a glimpse of the pavement without either of her feet on it. For a moment of liquified time she was suspended in midair like the coyote in the Roadrunner cartoon.

And then the old woman’s shriek was a whiplash on Tien’s conscience. She felt the sickening crunch of bone as it hit the pavement, as though it was her own hip that had fractured. She screamed along with Mrs Yipsoon and rushed to her side. The old woman had passed out.

Tien wanted to be punished by Gillian. She needed to feel a pain so bad—the pain of a broken hip and fractured wrist— that it would make her pass out with relief. Perhaps only then would Gillian talk to her; perhaps only then would she begin to feel better about herself again. She needed to atone but there was nothing she could do. The Gibsons did not want her at the hospital. Bob sent her home in disgrace.

She climbed up to Uncle Duong’s apartment, toed off her running shoes and placed them neatly among the flock of shoes herded onto a clear plastic sheet by the doorway. And she noticed a pair of shoes she had never seen before. Pointy red court shoes, badly scuffed. They had a visitor. She was relieved. That ought to delay her showdown with Auntie Ai-Van.

She stepped into the living room. Uncle Duong was there. So were Uncle Duc and Auntie Phi-Phuong and their two sons. And, seated on the sofa beside Uncle Duong, who had his arm wrapped around her shoulders, was a thin woman whose shoulder-length black hair was liberally streaked with grey. Her face was gaunt and expressionless, but Tien realised that the shape of her eyes was familiar. She looked at those eyes every day when she stared in the bathroom mirror.

Nobody said anything. Then Auntie Ai-Van came in from the kitchen carrying a tray of
che ba mau
drinks. She stopped, looked around, and carefully placed the tray on the table. Then she came towards Tien, put her hands on the girl’s shoulders and shook her.

‘Mrs Gibson rang. You are so naughty,’ she sighed. Then she took Tien’s hand and led her towards the sofa.