Behind the Moon (7 page)

‘What’s up?’ he kept bleating anxiously.

‘Shut up, Gibbo,’ Tien said.

He was hurt. He noticed that she never vented her temper on anyone else but him. ‘
Hi-yah
.
Lay ho mungchung
,
lah
,’ he said and grinned at Justin.

‘She really is irritable,’ Justin agreed.

‘Jeez, give it a rest, why don’t you,’ Tien snapped at Gibbo. ‘Your accent’s terrible and you’re not fooling anyone that you’re Chinese.’

‘Come on, Tien,’ Justin said, kicking her foot lightly. ‘Give him a break. Let’s not spoil the day, okay?’

A dishevelled young man wearing a badly stained plaid shirt, stinking of beer and urine, staggered onto the tram. He sat opposite Justin and Tien.

Justin immediately held up his left hand to his nose and pressed his fist against his nostrils. He breathed through his teeth and muttered, ‘
Chow toh say
!’ He exchanged a quick grin with Gibbo. Tien looked bored and Gibbo felt sorry that she was being left out. He leaned towards her and explained, ‘Justo says the smell will kill us.’ She ignored him and smiled at Justin.

‘What’re you lookin’ at?’ the young man demanded. ‘Hey! I’m talkin’ to you. Bloody chink.’

‘Nut case,’ Justin whispered to Tien. ‘We’d best ignore him.’

‘What’re you fuckin’ whisperin’? You talkin’ ’bout me? You think yer fuckin’ better’n me, you fuckin’ slope? Fuckin’ slanty-eyed boatie. Bloody fish-breath gook.’

Tien looked at Justin. He stared fixedly at his feet and the tips of his ears were bright red. She looked around the tram and all the passengers were looking out the window or just looking away. Gibbo stared back at her, mouth clamped shut, white-faced with fright.

‘Four-eyed. Yer all fuckin’ four-eyed. Can’t see nothin’ so yer no use here. We don’t want youse here. Go back to where you came from, you commie bastard boatie.’

Tien could bear it no longer. She said with exaggerated politeness, ‘Excuse me. I should point out that he doesn’t wear glasses and he’s actually not from Vietnam. I’m the Vietnamese one here and I can assure you it’s not really possible to be a commie bastard and a boatie at the same time.’

‘I wasn’t talkin’ to you,’ he snarled. ‘You want me to start on you? Is that what you want, you fuckin’ boong? You want me to smash this bottle an’ cut ya? Go climb back up ya tree and take fuckin’ four-eyes with ya.’

Justin pinched her hard and shook his head. She nodded reluctantly and held her tongue. Two more stops to go. They had to sit there and endure it.

‘Fuckin’ cocksuckin’ motherfuckin’ slope. Stealin’ our jobs. Kill youse all. Bang bang. Get rid of all you chinks.’

Gibbo couldn’t stand it any longer. He pulled the cord and jumped off at the next stop, and the others scrambled down after him. He was so angry and ashamed that he was trembling. Tears ran down his face and slime dripped from his nostrils. He felt humiliated for Justin and Tien and himself and every single person on that tram. In the weeks to come, he would replay the incident over and over again in his head. Next time, he swore to himself, he would be prepared. Next time he would do something. He would not just sit there, dumb with shock and fright. And embarrassment. How could embarrassment be so paralysing?

‘What are you crying about?’ Tien said nastily. ‘It didn’t happen to you. You didn’t do anything. You just sat there.’

‘Tien, don’t,’ Justin said, pulling her arm gently. ‘Gibbo couldn’t have done anything. It might’ve made things worse.’

She burst into tears and Justin hugged her, patting her back and soothing her. She cried because, for a moment, when it all started, she was simply glad that it was Justin who had been targeted and not her. She was not certain that she would have spoken up if she hadn’t known Justin. If he were a complete stranger, she might just have sat there and looked out the window; she would have thanked god it wasn’t her and pretended it wasn’t happening. Just like the other passengers.

‘Come on. Let’s walk,’ Justin said.

They wandered along North Terrace until they reached the Torrens River. They had to split up there because Tien wanted to try out the pedal boats, which only seated two people. Gibbo clambered into a yellow boat and held out his hand for Tien. She avoided his eyes and climbed into Justin’s boat instead.

Gibbo sat in his boat and watched as they pulled away from him, their two black-haired heads bending towards each other. A south-to-north magnetic attraction of Asians. He could claim to be Chinese and toss off Cantonese phrases and Singaporean exclamations, but he knew he would never be picked on like Justin or Tien because, no matter how Asian he felt inside, he looked white.

It wasn’t a turning point in their friendship. Not exactly. Nor a defining moment, either. Life simply did not have sufficient clarity. Perhaps it was just the onset of awkwardness among them and the feeling that, for whatever reason, he was being left behind.

A Fistful of Happiness in the Front Seat of a Car

We chanced to meet—and ever since

I have in secret yearned and pined for you.

My slender frame has wasted—who’d have thought that I could linger on to see this day?

For months I dreamt my goddess in the clouds;

lovelorn, I hugged my post, prepared to drown.

Nguyen Du,
The Tale of Kieu

Linh was jealous of Annabelle Cheong in a way she hadn’t been of Gillian Gibson, even though Tien continued to give Gillian Mother’s Day cards. She knew that Tien gave lots of women Mother’s Day cards: herself, Gillian, AiVan, Phi-Phuong, and Annabelle. Her daughter was sweet that way. Gillian might have tutored Tien and thrown her birthday parties as a child, but Gillian was white; she was too different to be a threat. Annabelle, however, was Asian. Linh compared herself to Annabelle, and she felt inferior.

Annabelle was not as educated as Linh, but she was still middle-class. She and Tek had migrated as much-needed professionals; they had not arrived on sufferance as refugees. She lived in an amazingly ugly, spacious, airconditioned concrete mansion in Strathfield and employed a cleaner and a gardener. Linh did her own cleaning and gardening. Once a week, she went and cleaned other people’s homes for extra cash. She was not bitter about this, but she felt wounded that Tien should esteem the Cheongs so highly and prefer their company to her own.

‘After all, she cannot help you with your homework the way Mrs Gibson does,’ Linh told Tien. ‘The woman’s English is awful.’

‘She’s so cool. I love the way she talks
lah
,’ Tien said. ‘So does Gibbo.’

‘Ong Ngoai will be disappointed,’ Linh said. ‘He was always particular about our language. You come from educated people. Our family was well respected in Saigon.’

But Tien did not want to know about the past. ‘Ancient history,’ she said impatiently, waving it away with a dismissive gesture. ‘Anyway, the Cheongs are not running a school. I’m not going over there to be educated. I just like hanging out there. Mr Cheong has the most amazing gadgets. Huge TV. Video camera. Computer and video games. Even a karaoke machine.’

‘Why would anyone want a karaoke machine?’ her mother wondered. Then she added doggedly, ‘You should be studying.’

After that, Tien did not see much of her mother for the next six months. Linh did a lot of overtime at the hospital, and Tien resented her mother for telling her she had to stay at home when there was nobody else around. She dreaded going to sleep in the silent, empty flat. She hated being alone.

Then Linh woke her early one Saturday morning. ‘Come. I have a surprise for you,’ said her mother excitedly. She grabbed Tien’s hand, dragged her out of bed and pulled her into the living room. The carpet was strewn with plastic, packing tape, ripped cardboard and moulded polystyrene frames. Out of this wreckage rose a huge Korean-made television mounted on a grey glass cabinet. ‘There. What do you think?’

‘It’s big,’ Tien admitted. It was of such mammoth proportions that the rest of the furniture in the small living room had to be crammed together to make room for it. She stubbed her toe as she clambered over the coffee table to get to it.

‘The driver came and delivered it half an hour ago. I read the instructions and connected it myself,’ Linh said proudly. ‘It works. Look.’

‘Yeah, great.’ Tien picked up the remote control and flicked on the television. She yawned. ‘Nothing but cartoons and
Video Hits
. I’m going back to bed.’

Linh stared at the closed bedroom door and her lips thinned into a hard, angry line. Where was the gratitude, she wondered. Couldn’t her daughter see how hard she was working so that they could enjoy the luxuries that other people—the Cheongs—enjoyed? She tried again. She did more overtime and bought a video machine but Tien still kept going over to the Cheongs’. Finally, Linh couldn’t stop herself from telling Tien, ‘I don’t want you going over so often. If you want to watch TV, you can do it here. You shouldn’t watch so much of it anyway. You must have homework to do.’

‘I don’t watch telly all the time. There’s nothing to watch these days. I just hang out with Annabelle. She’s teaching me how to cook.’

‘Oh, cooking. I did not know you wanted to cook. I can teach you,’ Linh offered. Then, too late, she realised that this was another one of those verbal traps her daughter delighted in setting.

‘Thanks, but I won’t put you to the trouble. You don’t have time anyway, and I only like to eat the stuff Annabelle cooks.’

‘You are not allowed to go there on school days,’ Linh said. ‘I forbid you.’

Tien simply said, ‘How? You won’t be around to do anything about it.’

They looked at each other and realised that their unacknowledged war had escalated. Tien had been rude before, but she usually apologised. She had never challenged her mother’s authority outright. Her declaration of rebellion exhilarated her, yet she could not escape a quick surge of guilt because it sometimes seemed as though
hieu
thao
was tattooed on her DNA. She could not excise it without destroying some part of herself.

‘You will not get away with this,’ Linh said finally. She resented her daughter for putting her in a position where she had to be stern and forbid and mete out punishments. She was afraid that she had brought it on herself because of her past actions.
My name is marked
in the
Book of the Damned
. We both reap what we sowed
in our past lives
.

Linh took a week off work. She waited for Tien outside the school gate and walked her home. She ignored Tien’s complaint that at her age she looked ridiculous being walked home by her mother. But Linh had to return to work the following week and when she rang home at five, Tien was not there to pick up the phone.

‘What are you going to do?’ Tien said, and her smile was insolent. ‘You going to ground me? Well, you can’t enforce it. You going to stop my pocket money? I don’t need it. I work at Uncle Duc’s. You tell him not to employ me, I can just go to the restaurant next door. You going to throw me out of home? Great. I’ll move back in with Uncle Duong. The shame will be on you as well. Auntie Ai-Van will know what kind of a mother you are.’

‘And just what kind of mother am I?’ Linh cried in frustration.

But Tien could not answer her, for she did not know herself. She only knew that Linh was to blame for all the things that were wrong in her life, from the distance between her and Gillian, to her unsuitability to be Justin’s girlfriend because she was two years older than him and she did not look sufficiently Asian.

Tien realised that she was too dark-skinned. She took to wearing hats and long sleeves in summer, but it didn’t stop Annabelle from exclaiming, ‘
Wah
! How come you so dark one when your mummy so fair?’

Tien shrugged, but Annabelle was not to be deterred. ‘Must be your daddy.’

‘Don’t know. Maybe.’

‘How come you don’t know anything about your daddy, Tien?’

‘He was like Bill Cosby.’

‘What! Bill Cosby was your daddy?’

Annabelle could be an amazingly gullible woman. For a moment, Tien debated whether she should try to lay claim to Hollywood parentage. Then she sighed and said, ‘No, not really. But he might be sort of related, I suppose.’

‘
Wah
, so good one
lah
! Does he know about you?’

‘Yes.’ No. Tien simply didn’t know. She told herself she had to be nice to Annabelle otherwise she would not be allowed to hang around the house with Justin.

‘How come you never go and live with him?’

‘He’s an American. Visa problems, I suppose. You know how hard it is to get a green card and everything. One day it’ll be sorted out and then he’ll come and get me.’

‘Oh.’ Tien could see the pity and disbelief in Annabelle’s eyes and she was angry with Annabelle and everyone else like her who kept twisting her mongrel roots around her neck. Most of all, she was angry with Linh for having been a bar-girl who knew lots of American GIs— even
black
ones! An awkward adolescence made Tien unforgiving in her rigid morality.

‘Your mummy must have been very broad-minded,
leh
?’

‘Broad-minded?’

‘You know. Your daddy was a black man, isn’t it?’

‘Only half. Blacks are the coolest people in America. They’re funny, they’ve got great fashion sense and they dominate
Video Hits
. I’m black and I’m proud. But what are you saying anyway? You think it’s not okay to have mixed-race relations?’

‘
Hi-yah
. No need to be so sensitive. I’m only asking. I’m not racist, you know. Of course it’s okay to us, but some people mind, you know. I remember Jay-Jay’s third great-auntie warned him not to marry an Indian or a black woman or she cut him out of her will. She’s very rich, you know. From Jakarta. Of course we were very shocked, but what to do? She’s very traditional,
leh
. Anyway, Tek told her that Jay will marry a nice Chinese girl of course. No need to worry.’

Tien anxiously scrutinised Annabelle’s face but could not tell whether that was a hint to her to stay away from Justin.

By the time Tien had completed her School Certificate and gone on to Year 11, she had to admit to herself that she was in love with Justin. It took the Strathfield Plaza massacre for her to realise how much she cared about him. Love made her embarrassed and insecure; she didn’t want him or anyone else to know. After all, he was only sixteen—two years younger than her—and nothing like the fantasies of romantic heroes she’d dreamt about in her early adolescence.

There was nothing particularly remarkable about him. He was simply Justin Cheong, B-grade pianist and athlete who played basketball and cricket for the B-team at school. He was nice enough in an ordinary sort of way. But to Tien, he was beautiful. She loved his long, lean body and the flat planes of his face. After the Strathfield shootings, he began to hang out with her more often. He never had very much to say to her, so she was able to read her dreams into his silence.

Tien couldn’t get over her crush on Justin. She thought about him constantly and rang him as often as she dared. She tried to make herself acceptable to his parents. She sat with Tek in his karaoke den as he belted out ‘My Way’ and other Sinatra songs. She hung around with Annabelle and endured her reproaches—‘How come your mummy never teach you how to cook rice properly?’—just to be near Justin.

She waited for two years. She bided her time, borrowed and read outdated issues of
Dolly
and
Cleo
, then psyched herself up to ask him to the Year 12 formal. He said yes, and she felt as ecstatic as if he’d agreed to marry her. She saved up her earnings from Uncle Duc’s restaurant and bought herself lace underwear, plucked her eyebrows and waxed herself in all the requisite places in order to prepare herself for love. She was determined to lose her virginity that night.

Justin borrowed his mother’s blue Toyota Camry to pick Tien up for the Year 12 formal. He handed her a corsage—yellow Singaporean orchids—and barely looked to notice that it clashed with the traditional Vietnamese silk
ao dai
she was wearing.

‘You look good,’ Tien told him. He shrugged and did not return the compliment so she was forced to ask diffidently, ‘Do I look okay? I mean, I don’t look stupid in this get-up, do I? Maybe I should’ve got a normal dress instead of letting the mothers talk me into this thing.’

‘You look fine,’ he said automatically as he waited for her to buckle up in the car. He glanced at her and was surprised to realise that she did indeed look all right. He’d always thought of her as a rather ugly girl; now he saw that there was a certain exotic beauty to her strong-boned features. He said, almost wonderingly, ‘You look really good, Tien.’

She beamed at him with that big wide mouth, and the momentary illusion of beauty was dispelled. He sighed and started the car. He did not know what to say to her as they drove to a hotel in the city. He parked the car and they walked inside to the function room where their classmates thronged, already half pissed. He felt depressed because it was only now that he realised how much more he’d wanted from his school life than this, and although he liked Tien and had been reciting her virtues to himself on a nightly basis to coax himself into attraction, he wished he was with Gibbo instead.

‘Why can’t you just come along?’ he’d begged Gibbo. ‘Don’t make me go to this alone, mate. We can be a threesome, as usual.’

‘Tien asked you, not me. And I won’t turn up without a partner.’

‘Who cares if you go solo?’

‘I care. I’m not going to play the loser for the whole year to see, even if I
am
one.’

‘Fuck.’ That was the problem with school formals, Justin thought bitterly. Everybody marched into that Noah’s Ark teamed up two by two. What did you do if you’d always been a threesome and there was nobody else to even it all out? He was angry with Tien. She had placed him and Gibbo in the position of being rivals. Instead of best friends, they were now winner and loser; the chosen and the rejected.

Justin made an effort to shake off his mood, but he couldn’t. They sat at a table and he only asked Tien to dance once. Few people came up and talked to them. They did not talk to each other.

Finally, he said to her, ‘Do you want to get out of here? Maybe go to Macca’s and grab something to eat?’

‘Yeah, all right,’ she said, and she thought that perhaps something of this night might be salvaged after all. He seemed to cheer up once they left the hotel. He loosened his tie, unbuttoned his collar and said, ‘Sorry to spoil it for you, Tien. I just really hate that kind of thing. Bores me shitless.’

‘Yeah, me too,’ she agreed heartily, although she had been looking forward to this night with Justin for months. She had pored over magazines, spun daydreams, practised dance moves and rehearsed conversational gambits which would never be used now. But she did not care because she was out with Justin, alone, on her first real date.

They went to a McDonald’s along Parramatta Road and ordered takeaway from the drive-through window. Then they sat in the car park and ate their burgers and fries, and Tien was finally happy. For the first time in months, it was just the two of them, without Gibbo. They talked about the HSC, what they wanted to do during the summer holidays, and what they hoped to do when university started.