Laurinda (16 page)

She was almost in tears. “What am I going to say to Sokkha? He comes tonight after dinner. I can’t make an entire shirt before then. You might not think this is important, because you have a different life now, but this shirt buys your bowl of rice every night.” Now she was in tears.

After a while, she picked up the phone and dialled Sokkha. “I have some bad news,” she told him. “Our baby got hold of some scissors and cut one of the shirts. I know. I’m sorry. No, no. I know I should have been looking out for him. Yes, I know, I know. But there’s only enough to make new sleeves. Please. Please, if you have some to spare, just about a metre. Just the front panel. I know I won’t be paid for it, but I don’t mind. It was my fault anyway . . . Thank you, thank you, brother. I just need a metre. I promise it won’t happen again.”

I felt so ashamed that my mother was grovelling to Uncle Sokkha.

I used to have more time for Mum when I was at Christ Our Saviour. I could easily finish my homework and help her with the sewing. But it seemed now that I never had time for anything except Laurinda.

*

I woke up around one in the morning. Somehow, I knew Mum was not in bed. I went into our kitchen. The kettle was still warm. I knew she was in the garage.

“Argh!” she yelped when I came in. “You scared me! What are you doing up? You should be in bed. You have school tomorrow.”

“Do you need some help, Mum?”

“No, I’m almost done.”

And she was. I handed her a Coast & Co. label.

O
n the Monday after Amber’s birthday, I was sitting in the library again, reading E.H. Gombrich’s
The Story of Art
. “It is infinitely better not to know anything about art than to have the kind of half-knowledge which makes for snobbiness,” I read. “The danger is very real.”

I was staring intently at a photo of a statue,
Hermes and the Infant Dionysus,
when Mrs Leslie interrupted me. “Lucy! What are you doing here by yourself?”

I wanted to be by myself, and this was what I preferred to do in my spare time. Was she going to drag me outside to where the Cabinet sat and tell them, “Girls, this is Lucy. You may remember her from the weekend and most of your classes. She will be playing with you”?

“This is a good book,” I told her.

“Indeed it is.” There was a long pause. She was probably thinking that a book is not a friend. “Those rice-paper rolls your mother made were delicious, Lucy.”

“Thank you, Mrs Leslie.”

“She is a superb Vietnamese cook.”

“Thank you, Mrs Leslie, but we’re not really Vietnamese. We are Chinese born in Vietnam.”

“Oh, is that right?” She wanted me to tell her more.

“We’re Teochew. Our ancestry is from Guangdong, in the south of China.”

All these place names barely meant anything to me – all I knew was that we spoke a dialect that several million people across China and South-East Asia spoke, a language that sounded both medieval and childish.

“Really? How fascinating. I’ve never heard of that language. Can you teach me a few words? How would I say ‘eye’?”

“
Muck
.”

“Pardon?”

“‘Eye’ is
muck
.”

She looked confounded, and a little worried that I was making it up until I pointed to my eye.

“I mean
me
. How do I say ‘I’?”

“Oh.
Wah
.”

“
Wah
?”

“Yes, Miss. That’s how you say ‘I’ in our language.”

“Okay,” she said tentatively, not knowing whether I was giving her pidgin-shit. “What about ‘he’ or ‘she’?”

“
Eee
.”

“Is that right, Lucy?”

“Yes.” Those were the words.
Miao
was “cat”.
Him
was “bear”.
Ka
was “leg” – and she thought I was pulling hers.

“Well, I’ve never heard anything like it.” Then she looked down at my book. “You know, Lucy, our library has an extensive collection of East Asian art books.”

“Thanks, Mrs Leslie.”

“We also have a wide range of Chinese history books. Perhaps you could find out a little more about your heritage in one of those.”

I liked Mrs Leslie – at times I even loved her – but really, how would she like it if I suggested to her that she should read books about the Irish potato famine?

*

The next day she found me again in the same spot. I had to bid farewell to Professor Gombrich and his lesson on the
Ghent Altarpiece
.

“Lucy, a few friends and I were talking,” she said, “and I was telling them about your mother’s wonderful cooking. Do you think there is a chance that we could get the recipe from her?”

“Sure, Mrs Leslie. I’ll ask Mum for it tonight.”

“Better yet, why don’t we invite you and your mother over for afternoon tea and a cooking lesson? I would love to meet her. Then she could show us how it’s done! Perhaps this Saturday? Does that sound like a fun afternoon to you, Lucy?”

It would have been a fun afternoon for Mum, if she believed in fun. But she believed in work. I assured Mrs Leslie I would ask my mother tonight.

“Oh, this will be too exciting!” she said. “I’ll ask along two other friends who’d absolutely love it.” She already considered it a done deal.

Of course, I did not ask my mother that evening. I could easily imagine her response: “What? They want me to leave my work and show them how to
cook
something? And then will they come home with me and help me iron my interfacing?”

My mother didn’t really have any friends, only a handful of other ladies in the same line of work. Whenever there was a large order, Aunt Ngo and Aunt Tee would get together to do the non-sewing tasks: putting buttons and spare threads in plastic envelopes, opening buttonholes, installing zippers. It depended on who had the right machine. They would cook together, but definitely not in a champagne-sipping way. “Ngo, while we finish this batch of buttons, can you check on the beef stock?” my mother would ask, or Aunty Tee, with pins in her mouth, would rush to the kitchen to turn over the roast pork. Then they’d all get back to work.

Professor Gombrich was getting mighty irritated with Mrs Leslie, because the following day she interrupted his lesson on the architecture of the King’s College Chapel in Cambridge to let me know that her friends could make it and to ask whether Saturday was still good for my mother and me.

“Mum can’t make it,” I told her. I didn’t enjoy disappointing someone I liked so much, so quickly added, “But I would be happy to show you how to make rice-paper rolls, Mrs Leslie.”

She smiled with relief, and when I saw her smile I suddenly realised the singular flaw in Amber’s face. Mrs Leslie was a warm Audrey Hepburn in her older, golden years, while Amber was a morgue-faced model who thought that smiling might give her premature wrinkles.

“That’s wonderful, Lucy! Now, what ingredients do you think we’ll need? Perhaps you and I could go to your local grocery store to get them after school on Friday. I’ve always wanted to know how to use the authentic things in an Asian grocery store.”

I could just see Mrs Leslie parking her BMW in the Sunray Station car park, next to the two-toned Ford Falcons and the other dodge-mobiles with paint peeling like eczema and their side mirrors duct-taped in place. I could imagine her stepping out in her clothes the colour of soil and sand, among the housewives with their red and gold lace-edged nylon tops, purple polyester pants and $20 perms. We would walk past Second Life Academic Books, where the books were kept behind rope barriers due to the recent spate of thefts.

I could just see her at the market, Linh, marvelling at the beauty of it all, extolling the parsimony of ethnic women and their ability to select ripe avocados and mangoes, bitter gourds and rambutans. Then we’d go back to her house to cook and she would tell her lady friends what a fascinating place I lived in, “so full of colour and life, just like Ho Chi Minh marketplace!” and they would probably be envious that they hadn’t had the special tour.

And here is the question I would have wanted to ask all of them, but especially Mrs Leslie:
Would you want to live here? Or would you only want to do this once before you went back to your “purveyor of fine foods”?

I snapped out of my reverie. “No, that’s fine, Mrs Leslie. My mother can buy the ingredients. She’s going shopping this evening.” And then, to stop her offering to accompany my mother, I added, “after her appointment with the Chinese herbal medicine doctor.”

“But what can I do to help?” Mrs Leslie asked.

“Well, you can decide what sort of meat you would like to put in the rice-paper rolls.”

“Great! I’ll get the meat, then.”

Linh, I knew it was wrong and sneaky of me to suggest the meat because it was the most expensive ingredient, but I didn’t know how else I was going to get it. Mum and Dad never gave me pocket money – I just asked them for things I needed and they bought them for me. How would I explain that I had roped myself into an afternoon of cooking instead of doing homework, or minding the Lamb, or sewing?

“Dad, can I have $20 to go on an excursion?” I felt bad asking him so soon after he had returned from his shift at work that evening, smelling like carpet chemicals.

“What? I thought your school covered all those things.”

Not the chartered school bus, I thought to myself. Not the trip to Adelaide for choir camp. Not the field trips to Japan or France.

“No, this is an excursion to the special Secrets of Ancient China exhibition at the museum.” Two things my father loved – education and our heritage. He pulled out his wallet and handed me $30. “I only need twenty,” I said.

“Keep it for lunch.”

“I’ll bring lunch.”

“Just keep it.”

*

On Saturday morning, I caught the bus to Stanley. At the market I bought Vietnamese and hot Thai mint, spring onions, cucumbers and bean sprouts. At the Asian grocery store, I bought vermicelli and rice paper. And then I went to Coles.

As much as Mrs Leslie wanted me to, I could not give them the “authentic” stuff. I could just imagine them
spooning
their fish sauce
over
their rolls, saying, “Ooh, this is very sharp and interesting,” while trying not to twitch their noses because the smell was as sharp and interesting as a lash on the bum from a whip soaked in vinegar. In the condiments aisle at Coles, there were not the two-litre glass bottles of fish sauce we had at home that we mixed with carrots and garlic, but a tiny 200-millilitre bottle made by a company called Ding’s Delight. The logo was a pointy triangle field hat with two chopsticks sticking out of it. It was $4.25. What the hell? I wondered. How could something so small, artificial and crap cost so much?

When I arrived at Canningvale Railway Station, Mrs Leslie was waiting. She opened the boot of her car and we loaded the bags. We drove past Canningvale Village with its strip of artisanal shops, past the streets with rising old Georgian and Queen Anne houses, until we reached her gate.

As I unpacked the groceries, Mrs Leslie reacted as I imagined a new mother would when opening gifts at a baby shower. “Ooh, what do you call this herb?” she would ask, bringing it to her nose to sniff. She was particularly taken with the rice paper. “It’s stiff!” she remarked. “I imagined it would have the texture of spring roll pastry.” Then she noticed the Ding’s Delight. Picking it up, she asked, almost accusingly, “Is this what you use at home, Lucy?”

“No,” I confessed, “but real fish sauce takes ages to make.” One truth and one half-lie.

She told me that her friends Gloria and Margaret were coming with their daughters. It was then that I noticed the table had been set with dips and a cheese platter. “You know them from school,” she said. “Brodie and Chelsea.”

Of course, I thought. Of course their mothers were all friends.

It was eleven-thirty but Amber was nowhere in sight.

“Amber’s probably still in bed,” explained Mrs Leslie. “I’d better go and wake her. She shouldn’t be sleeping in this late. I bet you got up at a very early hour, Lucy, to go to the market and get all these things!”

Amber came out in her pyjamas – small shorts and a white singlet – rubbing one eye. If I could capture this image and beam it into the brain of the loneliest and meekest Auburn boy, I thought, he would be a happy soul indeed.

“You’re here early,” she murmured. “Why?”

“You slept in late,” corrected Mrs Leslie. “Come and help us set up.”

“I’m going to get some breakfast first.” Amber wandered to the cupboard and pulled out the Special K. “Want some?” she asked me.

“No, thanks.”

“Mum, Brodie, Chelsea and I are going out afterwards.”

“Where to?”

“Just out. Maybe some shopping.”

Mrs Leslie looked in my direction, and Amber realised her mistake in mentioning this in front of me. “You can come too, Lucy. If you want.”

“No, thanks, I have to get home and help my mother with some things.”

I really didn’t want to hang out with them, Linh. Firstly, Amber had invited me but her tone implied the opposite, and secondly, I imagined they’d only go to shops where you’d emerge with stiff cardboard bags lined with tissue paper.

The other two mothers arrived at noon, with champagne and flowers and chocolate truffles wrapped in David Jones paper. Around their necks were rose-gold chains as thick as fingers, and silky scarves that smelled of perfume.

Brodie’s mother was Brodie in thirty years’ time. Her hair was cut into a bob as even as the blade of a cleaver. She had deep-set blackcurrant eyes, a long nose and large Julia Roberts lips. She was what Jane Austen would call a handsome woman.

Chelsea’s mother, on the other hand, was a surprise. She looked like a version of Chelsea that had been taken out of the fridge and left to thaw for too long. Where Chelsea had bronze-brown hair, her mother’s was copper, and Mrs White’s paler skin was flecked with freckles. With a big friendly slab of a face, powdered like a doughnut, she was also the fattest of the three.

“Oh, this is delightful!” she laughed, seeing the ingredients set out on the bench. “What can I do, Lucy? Would you like me to wash these herbs? You are the head chef here!” I soon realised that Mrs White found most things delightful, and the more she found them delightful, the more Chelsea found her unbearable.