Funny ethnics, p.10
Funny Ethnics, page 10
I started to stand up as well, intending to climb into the front passenger seat beside him. But before I could put my leg over the brake, Kevin shifted the gear and pressed a foot into the accelerator. The Mercedes reversed and I fell back into place.
10
CYA
‘I became a Buddhist after a schoolies trip to Thailand.’
The guest speaker was tanned, his wide shoulders straining at the seams of his navy suit. He reminded me of Brad Pitt’s wax figure in Madame Tussaud’s down near Darling Harbour. Back in Year 8, we had a day collecting donations for the Cancer Council, but Tammy and I had snuck into the wax museum instead. Tammy pretended to marry Brad Pitt and I pretended to marry Bruce Willis. A thousand people came to our joint wedding at Crystal Palace in Canley Heights. Under the plastic chandeliers, the DJ played ‘Time After Time’ by Cyndi Lauper. As Tammy made out with Brad, and Bruce and I intertwined our arms and poured whiskey into each other’s mouths, a big security guy with skulls tattooed on his neck ambled over. His name tag read Fetu.
‘You westies are better off staying in school than drooling over movie stars.’ His bread-loaf hands steered us out into the daylight. If only Fetu could see me at uni now, attending lectures held by Brad Pitt look-alikes.
‘Time is money but life isn’t about money. Just be yourself and know what you’re passionate about.’ Fake Brad Pitt’s voice echoed along the smooth curve of the auditorium. The seats were covered in a thick red fabric that tickled the back of my thighs. He wasn’t saying anything new, yet everyone was applauding.
People got up and surged to the front of the room. One girl pushed her way to the lectern and grabbed the mic. She said her name was Kelly Agathocleous and she wanted to thank Brad for taking time out of his busy schedule to speak to us. His name was actually Brad.
I left the lecture and wandered to the food court. While standing in line, I looked up Brad’s multimillion-dollar juice company on my phone. It was called Better Leaves and the head office was in Surry Hills. I tapped on ‘Employment Opportunities’ and saw that Better Leaves was offering five internships for undergrads. Unpaid. I ordered a lasagne with extra cheese and sat on damp grass. A long shadow fell over me. It was Carina Tan, a regular HD scorer with posture like a prawn. She had a thin face, thin lips and thin black hair that drooped all over her pale collarbones. Without saying a word, Carina licked her index finger and dropped a shiny pamphlet. The sheet of paper spiralled down and one of the corners lodged in the melted cheese of my lasagne before nestling in my lap. The golden letters on the pamphlet glowed like brand-new coins.
‘PWIP. Put Women in Power,’ I murmured. But Carina had already walked off.
~
Our first meeting was in C5T2, one of the accounting tutorial rooms. There was a bowl of browning guacamole on the table. Carina Tan ripped open a bag of Doritos and put it beside the guac before scuttling away to the corner. She sat hunched over her notepad as if she were expecting an apocalypse.
The rest of us three girls hovered near the food. My fingers nervously pecked a single Dorito at the dip, unsure what would happen if I ingested rotting avocado. Another girl, South Asian with vitiligo around the corners of her mouth and thick hair gathered in a plait, scooped up a handful of chips and took a seat in the front row. The remaining girl had Paris Hilton’s straight nose and Ray-Bans combing back her long blonde hair. She rolled her eyes at the guac and chips and also sat in the front row. I swirled my fifth chip in the dip and took a seat in the second row.
A porcelain-skinned plump girl walked in with the strut of a rooster, chest puffed out, footsteps calm and deliberate. Kelly Agathocleous. President of PWIP.
Up close, Kelly had an egg-shaped head with a brown topknot. She was wearing a grey coat that had silver buttons and a furry collar. As she spoke, the freckle on her upper lip barely moved. Something something … ‘thanks for coming here.’ She stared at my forehead the whole time.
Kelly reached over to a laptop behind a projector. A YouTube page appeared on the front wall. Kelly typed into the search bar ‘Sheryl Sandberg’ and clicked on a TED talk called ‘Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders’. A middle-aged woman with a sleek brown bob and a skirt suit listed three steps. I wanted to wipe the sweat from my upper lip but my fingers were gritty with Doritos crumbs.
Dragging her laptop mouse through the video, Kelly stopped at the point where the woman said: ‘One, sit at the table. Two, make your partner a real partner. And three, don’t leave before you leave.’ Kelly exhaled and sat on the table in front of the room. Leaned back on her hands. My heart beat faster. My hands and legs went numb. Sheryl was going to save me.
That night, I repeated those lines to myself while driving to Tammy’s house in Fairfield to use her wi-fi. On the radio, the presenter was squawking to his female co-host, telling her about a growth between his balls and asshole. I hit the mute button and wound down the windows of Cousin Đức’s old Mazda. The wind pushed back all my hair and I passed the Lansvale Nacca’s which had a 2.8-star rating on Google. It was now called Nacca’s because half the M didn’t light up anymore. I promised myself I was going to be like Sheryl. Powerful and confident. No more sweating or avoiding social situations. Slamming my foot on the accelerator, I roared down the Hume Highway. I was going too fast to notice a pothole and went straight into it. The impact lifted me out of my seat. My head hit the ceiling and the seatbelt cut into my collarbone. I was in shock and wanted to pull down the mirror to check whether I was bleeding but the car behind me honked so I pushed the accelerator harder. The front tyre became unstuck and I could smell burnt rubber the rest of the way.
It took fifteen minutes to squeeze the Mazda into a space between a dirty white ute with a bumper sticker that said ‘Practise Safe Sex: Go Fuck Yourself’, and a silver 4WD with bobblehead dogs on the dashboard. Hampton Street was always constipated. I turned up at Tammy’s door with my fringe glued against the tacky skin of my forehead.
‘Sylvia the virgin with a sacred vagina, what took you so long? Get in here, my mum made spring rolls but you’re gonna have to eat them cold.’
I wasn’t fooled into thinking that her mum had actually made them. I had been over to Tammy’s house since Year 7 and their bin was always full of Woolies Asiana Spring Roll packets. Still, I grabbed six of them and followed Tammy to her room. We passed her mum who was watching K-dramas with Vietnamese dubbing in the living room. The actresses on the screen were slender, with glowing skin and cherub lips. Mrs Tran didn’t turn to look at us. I remembered when Tammy had lied that her dad had gone back to Việt Nam to visit his dying mother. Then I’d heard it on the street that Tammy’s dad had run off with a woman he’d met at the Bankstown Sports Club pokies.
We sat on the wooden floor of Tammy’s room, surrounded by plastic shopping bags filled with the clothes, make-up and perfume she’d bought that week using her youth allowance money. She hadn’t told Centrelink that she’d dropped out of her fashion course at TAFE yet. She squatted in the middle of the room with her skinny legs spread apart, wearing her favourite Supré jeggings with the fuzz balls all over them. Her hands burrowed through the mess. Perfume bottles with their smooth glass and pastel liquid were displayed on her bedside table like trophies. Older bottles were caked in grey dust and sat beside a jar of paper stars that her ex Jin-Soo had folded for her. I had been there beside her when she’d texted him to say it was over because she’d found a photo of him on Facebook with his pale veiny arms all over Georgina Xie. Maybelline eyeshadows were shoved into her wardrobe, which only closed when you stacked a couple of shoeboxes against the door. Once, the metal rod in the wardrobe had popped out of its socket under the weight of all her clothes.
That day we sorted through her clothes and put the unwanted crap in a bag for Salvos. We counted seventeen bodycon dresses, twenty miniskirts and forty-three-and-a-half pairs of skinny jeans. The half was the result of Tammy hacking one pair with scissors to get the ‘distressed effect’, except one leg fell off completely. When I had met her at Orientation Night, she’d told me she was going to be the next Donatella Versace. I’d told her I was a creative soul as well, that I was destined to be the next Sylvia Plath because Mẹ named me after her. That was a lie. Mẹ had wanted to call me Gold to increase my chances of becoming rich. But Barbara, our neighbour, stopped her and said Margaret was better – like Margaret Thatcher. In the end Mẹ settled on Sylvia because it still had a metallic money sort of ring to it.
Tammy lifted a pair of red satin pumps from a Wittner bag and dangled them in front of my nose like the lady in the Schmackos ad. Usually I would help her sort through her new stash of goodies, but this time I sat with my laptop on my knees. I observed my best friend over the edge of the Pirate Bay window where Lean In was being downloaded. Her frizzy bleached hair was coming out of the scrunchie on top of her widow’s peak and specks of powder foundation had settled in the roots. A dull glint in Tammy’s eyes reflected the dead moths in the Reject Shop light hanging from the ceiling.
The torrent hit eighty-five per cent. I told myself I should stop coming over to Tammy’s place so much. We were in different stages of our lives now. At the beginning of the semester, I had received an email from the law faculty accepting my application to do a law degree alongside my BA. I had told Tammy and she’d dismissed it with a singsong voice, ‘I chose looks, you chose books.’ Ninety per cent. I was starting to find myself at uni, meeting people and becoming a PWIP girl. I no longer wanted to be Sylvia Plath; I was destined to be Sheryl Sandberg. Tammy was now working full time at ProfessioNAIL in Bankstown after dropping out of TAFE. She spent 9 to 5 breathing in acetone and scrubbing old women’s crusty feet. I’d visited her once and watched her painting the fingernails of a lady who looked like she belonged in the Ajax Spray n’ Wipe ad. When the job was done, the lady tilted her head back and held up her vanilla slice fingers under the tube lights, her cloudy marble eyeballs shifting back and forth as she examined the flecks of golden glitter shimmering on each nail. Ninety-five per cent. Tammy was still the Tammy I knew in Year 12, binge-buying and eating Fantastic Noodles for two months straight to get an LV wallet. One hundred per cent.
I snapped my laptop shut and told Tammy I had an early class tomorrow. On the way out of the house, we passed her mum in the living room again. She was still watching her K-drama, but this time she had a giant pile of cloth next to her. On the TV screen, a handsome man gripped the upper arms of a beautiful young woman. They looked like brother and sister. The man’s nose was straight and narrow, his pale skin blemish free, and he was wearing a black polyester suit that matched his slicked-back hair. The young woman’s nose was also straight and narrow, her pale skin blemish free, and she had on tight skinny jeans that clung to her long legs. The man and woman were at the airport. He was telling her to stay in Korea – he would go against his parents’ wishes and marry her.
‘Mum’s making cash by taking on sewing jobs,’ Tammy explained. ‘She makes shit for the spenno brands like Cue, you know.’ She walked over and yanked a piece of butcher’s paper from the bottom of the pile. On it, the pattern of the garment was sketched in lead pencil. I held it up to the light and made out a grey jacket with silver buttons and a furry collar.
On the way home I pulled up at the Lansvale Nacca’s and ordered a Big Mac meal. I sat in the car park and felt the soft beef patties with their distinctive cardboard taste against my tongue. My belly ballooned against the waistband of my jeans. I lifted my shirt and saw the faint black hairs all over my yellow skin; sucked in my stomach and saw the red circle mark left behind by the metallic button; snapped open the button and pulled down the fly. I exhaled and let my stomach expand to its full size. It was time for the fries.
Outside there were at least ten stray cats curled up on the gravel like furry hills. In the parking space opposite me, a white mother cat had her paws wrapped around her kittens. She stared into the headlights of the Mazda and her pupils flashed a fluoro green colour. I rolled down the window and puckered my lips. ‘Tchu-tchu-tchu-tchu.’ Her ears shot up. One of the kittens plunged its face deeper against the mother’s chest, hiding from the lights and noise.
Five chips left. I clutched them in my fist. The potato was cold and the granules of salt stuck to my knuckles. I flung them into the air towards the mother cat. She leapt forward, yowling and hissing. Several other cats were suddenly on their feet, sprinting towards her. The kittens screamed as their mother arched her back and raised the fur above her fangs so that the other cats could see her gums. They backed away. I watched the kittens huddling around the mother cat. One kitten, unsteady on its tiny paws, lifted its head and sniffed its mother. Another, with whiskers growing out of its forehead, leaned into her belly, soaking in her warmth. I pulled my cardigan further up my shoulders and imagined myself in that grey Cue jacket. Silver buttons. Furry collar.
11
FML
The blow flowing through Cabramatta’s veins emulsified into bubble tea. Dealers transmogrified into doctors and I, I was still dragging my body to law school. In one of the khaki toilet cubicles, a message read Ps get degrees in liquid paper. My favourite part was the lectures because, duh, I could sleep in there. I was always sleepy, just like in high school. It was how I processed reality. Failing to get an internship at a media agency turned into a dream where I found myself inside a lift drifting in the middle of the ocean. Being late to class turned into doing doughnuts in a clock-shaped racing car around campus. Other dreams, like catching my teeth as they fell out of my mouth while walking to Yagoona Station, were harder to decipher.
My least favourite part was the tutes. To earn 20 per cent of my final mark, I had to ‘participate’, aka rabidly fight my classmates to answer questions like a pompous potato head. And if I failed to ‘participate’, I failed the entire course. Tell the tutor you’ve got social anxiety, ‘AgreeablePrune89’ on Reddit told me. I’d never heard of social anxiety before. It sounded like a made-up disease that crafty lawyers used to get their clients less jail time. I knew about general anxiety – my mother had been diagnosed with it and she refused to see a therapist. Instead, she drank raw aloe vera shakes and meditated. Ba didn’t see any point in encouraging her to see a therapist. ‘Why would I pay a stranger to find out our personal business?’ he asked.
Our torts tutor was a young guy named Warwick whose oversized T-shirts accentuated the softness of his shoulders. He accessorised the shirts with two thick gold chains, one of which had a Cross pendant that was at least ten centimetres long. Despite his kakapo-meets-church-rapper look, Warwick was just as square as all of the other tutors. He’d already sent an email warning us to do the readings or risk being embarrassed if he directed a question at us.
Warwick had a habit of pacing while he talked. He’d walk from his desk to the projector near the window and then back towards the door on the other side of the room. I would watch his Adidas sneakers with the red racing stripes pad back and forth on the carpet, tension gripping my brain and shoulders. The plastic red second hand on the clock above the whiteboard trembled. Tock, tock, tock. I was too scared to breathe in case it drew the kakapo rapper’s attention. The jingle from the Forty Winks ad played in my head. Forty Winks, 40-hour sale, Forty Winks, 40-hour sale. Save. Up. To. 40 per cent. My last essay got forty per cent so I needed those participation marks. But only for 40 hours. I wondered if Warwick would yell at me for being so stupid. Save. Up. To. 40%.
He’d already called on Alfred and Josephine, the other two Asians in the class, to answer his questions. I could tell they were from the East – as in East Asia and East Sydney. Alfred wore creaseless beige made-in-Việt Nam Uniqlo chinos and Josephine draped her willowy ballerina figure in the latest dresses from General Pants. Neither of them had badly bleached hair, thick thighs or purple acne scars around their jaw. When class was over, they walked to the station with poise and dignity because they probably lived in Chatswood and trains in that direction came every ten minutes. They didn’t have to catch four trains back to Yagoona. Alfred and Josephine. Sleek, smart, studious. How Asians were supposed to be.
During the third week of tutes, while discussing whether one could sue for emotional distress, Warwick’s chains swung in my direction. Forty Winks. I bolted out of my seat and hurried towards the door, pretending I had to go to the bathroom. I sat in one of the cubicles, thumbs massaging my temples. Forty Winks, 40-hour sale, Forty Winks, 40-hour sale. Save. Up. To. 40 per cent. How could I remember an annoying jingle from my childhood and not retain any information from the heavy textbooks that clapped down on my back every time I ran to the station?
I decided to hang back after the tute. The smartest guy in class, a self-proclaimed second-generation British–Australian named Anthony James, waltzed around Warwick like a fruit fly near a rotting banana. I ground my teeth as I watched Warwick discussing clerkships and judge’s tipstaff positions with Anthony. If only there was a pest spray big enough to shoo Anthony away. The longer he took to ask ambitious questions, the antsier I became. My brain was heating up like a busted hairdryer and my breathing became more and more shallow. I imagined Warwick’s round shoulders squaring up as I grovelled for participation marks. I imagined the big gold chains coming to life and wrapping themselves around my neck.
Warwick turned away from Anthony and smiled at me. I gapped it. Again. My sneakers pounded the carpet of the corridor and the doors were a blur. ‘Sylvia?’ I heard Warwick call out. Fuck! Now he was wondering why I was running away like a nut job. Oh wait, that was exactly what I wanted, right? I stopped. Turned around. Warwick stood in the corridor like a lost case. Anthony flattened himself sideways as he passed me, keen not to catch any of my dumb ethnicness.
‘Sorry Warwick, th-thought you w-were b-busy.’ I pressed a hand to my chest, trying to steady my breathing. Each step I took towards him felt like I was wading through concrete.
