Laurinda (7 page)

“Excuse me?” Amber’s eyes widened.

“What did you call us?” Chelsea turned towards him, “That is
sooo
offensive. Oh my god. Geez, some people can’t take a joke,” she pouted. I could see she was wounded because her eyes glittered like anthracite. Suddenly, it seemed, this was all Harshan’s fault – he was the brute, insulting these two young Laurinda diplomats who meant well, who were curious about his culture. They were
nice
girls, and he was a condescending sexist pig.

Harshan looked down at them, and I could tell that all the beauty he’d seen there had dissolved. Then he did something completely unexpected, which made them squeal. He lowered his head and bowed from the waist – a long, drawn-out bow that came to just above the hem of their skirts, his back straight as an ironing board. He slowly came up and held his hands in the prayer position. Bobbing his head from side to side, he said, “Oh, golly gee, ma’am, I’m welly, welly solly – please accept my most humble apologies.” His face was hard but, unlike Chelsea’s, it was not brittle. He turned and walked away.

Amber and Chelsea burst into laughter. “Stupid curry-muncher,” said Chelsea, and then told a story about how guys like that were always trying to pick her up at Urban nightclub and how they couldn’t dance for shit.

I moved away from the brain sculpture.

*

Amber returned from Auburn Academy with a pen. It had a plastic heart at the top that lit up, and it played a tinny song when you wrote with it. I’m not sure which boy had given it to her, but Amber was ecstatic, flashing it around class, showing teachers and using it to write, until Mrs Trengrove said that the music was too distracting; could she please use a normal biro like everyone else? Even that did not ruin her heart-thumping joy, and she bounded to class, skipping and leaping, showing off her gazelle legs.

There was love elsewhere, too.

In Politics, someone had put a single heart-shaped chocolate wrapped in gold foil on Mr Sinclair’s desk. We all knew it was Gina. He walked to his desk, put down his planner and lesson folder, and pretended not to see it.

“Sir!” Chelsea called out. “Sir, someone left something for you!”

He also pretended to be deaf.

“Sir,” Chelsea repeated, “I think someone left you a present.”

He looked down at his desk, at the very spot where the chocolate was, so we knew that he knew it was there. As much as he tried, he wasn’t very good at feigning surprise. His face was turning as red as his hair.

“Oh,” he exclaimed.

Poor guy. Perhaps teachers’ college hadn’t taught him what to do in this scenario. We could tell he was wishing for the chocolate to disappear. To acknowledge that it was there, and that it was intended for him, would be like, well . . . like taking candy from a minor.

We all started to laugh, which gave him an opportunity to try to be a teacher again. “All right, cut it out. That’s enough carrying on.”

“What are you going to do with it, Mr Sinclair?”

“Ooh, you have a secret admirer!”

“I wonder who it is!”

“Someone loves you, Sir!”

“Yes, very funny,” he said drily. “Now, where did we leave off last class? The American electoral system, I believe.”

You had to hand it to him – no one gave a toss about how the Americans elected their president, but he ploughed on regardless. The girls were too distracted by that little gold object on his desk, a symbol of their power over this awkward but endearingly attractive man.

I could look at them all, Linh, and tell myself how ridiculously these girls were carrying on, but during recess, sitting with Katie, who genuinely didn’t care about the art show visit or about getting presents, I felt a pang. As she talked, I started to fall into my usual reverie about the sort of year I might have had if I hadn’t changed schools. Maybe, if I had stayed at Christ Our Saviour, I might have had a boyfriend from St Andrew’s . . .

There’s a secret to getting a boyfriend at fifteen, and it is this: you have to have a group of friends. You’ll never get picked up alone unless by creeps, or unless you are extremely beautiful (and even then you’ll mostly get creeps), because alone you have no personality. It’s only when you’re with your friends that you start to shine.

Boys are the same. You see a boy around his mates, and you can pick whether he is the clown of the group, the quiet philosopher or the alpha male. Alone, you can’t tell because he’d act differently, and of course he can’t tell anything about your personality either. When alone with a member of the opposite sex, we feign indifference, even though we yearn to be exaggerated versions of ourselves, filled with extra bravado or extra niceness.

My problem this year was that I no longer had a group. I had lost you and Yvonne and Ivy. Even Tully had been worth tolerating. As much as I liked Katie, we weren’t really a group. We never did anything together outside of class or lunch break. We never called each other up in the evening. And our dynamic was that Katie talked and I listened.

In my first week, Katie had asked me, “What do you do during school holidays?” but before giving me a chance to reply, she said, “I usually spend them on my cousin’s place near the countryside, in Mallah. They have seven acres and four cows and some sheep. It’s only a hobby farm, though, because my uncle owns a small business in town. It’s beautiful and real peaceful there. My cousin Dick and I ride horses. You should come up with me next school holidays!”

Oh my god, Linh, this girl was straight out of a 1950s picture book! She had called her cousin Dick with no sense of irony whatsoever.

I wondered what it would be like to be admired or desired by a boy, and thought about how lucky Amber was. I guess Gina was thinking the same thing, because she came up to us at recess. “Did you hear what Amber called me when the Growler sent me back to school to wash my face off?”

“No,” Katie lied. “What did she call you, Gina?”

Just as Gina was about to tell us what we already knew, she spotted something that made her jaw clamp like a clam. The Cabinet were approaching!

If the rest of the school had not taken them so seriously, I would have laughed then, because they walked like a movie mean-girl gang, with heads held high and each with one hand (the right) in her blazer pocket. What was this, some kind of Western where they’d pull out their pistols and have a shootout?

Gina bared her teeth in what she hoped was a smile.

Brodie acknowledged Katie and me by giving us a small nod that barely tilted her chin. Then she turned to Gina. “Hey there, Regina. We hear you’ve been going around the school telling all and sundry that Amber has damaged your good name.”

She actually used the words “all and sundry”, Linh.

“Oh yeah?” demanded Gina, but her voice was fearful. “Who told you that?”

“It doesn’t matter who told who what.” That was Chelsea – she was less articulate. “If you have a problem with any of us, you should have the guts to say it to our faces.”

“Yeah,” said Amber. “I thought we were friends.”

Gina looked stunned: she’d never so much as contemplated the possibility that the Cabinet would consider her a friend.

“I’m hurt that you’ve been backstabbing me, Gina,” said Amber. “I thought that, as friends, we could joke around about stuff like that. I didn’t mean it! If anyone is the slut, it is obviously
me
.”

Gina was even more flabbergasted.

“Come on, who was the harlot who came back with the tacky pen?” Amber pulled it out and waved it around for emphasis.

“Yeah,” Chelsea added. “Imagine all the tricks Amber had to turn to get her cheap materialistic thrills.”

“She has no shame,” added Brodie.

Gina cracked a tentative smile. Then, seeing it was okay by the Cabinet, she started to laugh.

Amber flung an arm around Gina’s shoulder. “Here, my fellow ho.” Then she did something that took Gina completely by surprise. “Have this.” She handed Gina her flashing pink pen.

“Oh,” stammered Gina, “Oh . . . are you sure?”

“Of course! Chicks before dicks!”

After they left, Gina was in shock. “Oh my god, Amber just gave me this!” she said, as if Katie and I hadn’t just witnessed the whole thing. But I knew that Amber’s enthusiasm over her gift was all a show. She had only pretended to be proud of the thing to heighten its value, before she offloaded it. Gina had pen envy, and the Cabinet knew just how to fuel it.

“I feel so bad,” confessed Gina. “I was a backstabbing bitch to her over some stupid joke.”

“Yeah, that was real nice of them,” said Katie wistfully, and I looked at my friend, stunned.

A
fter school that day I got off the train at Sunray and headed for the indoor market. “Bring meat home, four hundred grams of beef,” my mother had instructed me the night before. “Don’t pick the pieces that are brown, and don’t loiter.”

At Vinh and Robina’s Meats, Tully’s mother greeted me as I walked in the store. “Wah, look at you, Lucy, so smart in your uniform!”

At school I may have looked like a try-hard, super-polished version of everyone else in my immaculate uniform, but in this neighbourhood I stood out like a beacon, a sign to small business owners and factory workers that the next generation would belong to a different class. This was an outfit not made for messing up, or for hacking away at cow carcasses, or for hiding in back rooms threading needles. This outfit was made for a seated life, a life of air-conditioning, long lunches and weekends away in semi-rural cottages.

“How are you finding the work at the school?” asked Tully’s mother.

“Okay, Mrs Cho,” I answered. “There’s a lot more of it than at Christ Our Saviour.”

“Of course there is!” she exclaimed. “Those good schools always give you more work. It’s how they get students used to working hard at university. Afterwards, when they all become professionals, they have good work habits and get promoted sooner.”

Tully’s mother didn’t just talk to you; she lectured. She also had a pretty warped idea of how the world worked.

“So what subjects did you pick this year, Lucy?”

I listed them, one by one. Mrs Cho’s eyes widened when I finished. “No advanced maths?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’m no good at it, Mrs Cho.”

“But how are you going to get into university without taking an advanced subject?”

I didn’t dare tell her that I also intended to drop most of my science subjects when I got to Year Eleven next year, Linh. She would have had a heart attack and collapsed on her tray of duck livers. Instead, I smiled, because within our community a smile often seemed to be the right answer to anything if you’re a girl. “I don’t want to be a doctor or anything like that.”

“What do you think you will do, then? Law?”

“No,” I confessed. “I’d like to get into teaching.”

“Wah! What a waste, with you being so smart. Aiyoh, such a waste. So much smarter than Tully!”

I didn’t take the bait. “Not sure about that.”

“Ah, that Tully!” Mrs Cho sighed. “Uncle says she’s lazy and, well, you know, that kind of ding-dong way she has – so helpless and impractical. We despair. What will she ever make of herself? She’s not as stable or as hardworking as you are, Lucy Lam.”

Even though I didn’t really like Tully, it seemed unfair that her own mother would talk about her like this.

“Ay, ay,” she said, waving me closer. “I know why Tully did not get into the school. Her English is not as good as yours. I remember now, Lucy, you won the Year Eight poetry competition! Yes! You!”

I smiled again, although by now my jaw was beginning to feel sore.

“Maybe you can come over and give Tully some lessons in English, huh?” she asked. I said yes to be polite, knowing that the last thing Tully needed was tutoring from me.

Mrs Cho handed me the bloodied block of steak in a plastic bag with a knot tied at the top. “Well, pass on our regards to your mum and dad. They must be very proud of you.”

“Yes, I will. Thanks, Mrs Cho.”

*

There was a letter from the school in our mailbox when I arrived home.

Dear Mr Lam,

It appears that your daughter is not participating in Laurinda’s extracurricular Physical Education Programme. We stress the importance of physical education for the overall health of every student, and for the beneficial effects of teamwork.

Lucy has been signed up for netball but has not attended any games this term. Please ensure that she . . .

I dropped the letter in the kitchen bin and went to the garage, where I found the Lamb in his cardboard box. He listlessly banged his rattle and one-eyed terry-towelling duck together.

“Yo, Lamb,” I said, picking him up. “What have you been up to today?”

His nose was running, so I tore a sheet from a roll of toilet paper Mum had left nearby and wiped his face. A streak of blue stained his cheek. That was strange, I thought; I hadn’t seen textas in his box today. Then I looked at the wad in my hands and realised that the tissue was also daubed blue. I looked back at the Lamb, and wiped his nose again. His snot was the same blue that a Toilet Duck cube would turn the water after you flushed.

“Ma!” I yelled. “Ma, come and have a look at this!”

“Coming, coming. No need to yell the house down.” My mother came back into the garage with Lamb’s bottle and set it down next to her overlocker. “What is it?”

“His snot is blue!”

“Let me see.”

I showed her the tissue, and as she took it from me I noticed that her fingertips were the same blue. After examining the tissue, she looked at the pile of denim jeans by her sewing machine. “Oh, crap,” she sighed. “He’s breathing it all in.”

She was right: the Lamb had been inhaling the floating blue-dyed dust motes whenever my mother shook out a pair of jeans or trimmed their edges in preparation for the overlocker. I imagined the branches on the tiny trees of his lungs overhanging with blue threads. Enough time and breathing, I imagined, and each organ would be encased in a little knitted blue pouch.

“Aiyoh,” my mother sighed. “We need to find a better place for him to sit during the day.” Then she added, needlessly, “Don’t tell your father.”