Funny ethnics, p.8
Funny Ethnics, page 8
As I was garnishing my third round of bánh xèo, an aunt from the neighbouring stall serving fried chicken yelled out, ‘Ê! There’s an Aussie. Is he from the council?’ The c-word sent a ripple effect through the rest of the Viets. Mẹ flicked off the switches on the portable stoves. I slammed lids on tupperware containing fish sauce, flipped up the A4 paper signs and hid them under the tablecloth. Fried Chicken Aunty yelped, ‘Ooi-ya, ooi-ya!’ as she burned her fingertips trying to cover up her deep fryer.
We were there illegally. The uncles organising the event had camped out at the park since 3am to make sure that the fair could take up the entire grounds. Properly registering the event with the local authorities would mean coughing up money that no one had and filling out paperwork that no one understood. It was a risk every year. This was why the organisers had decided on the first Sunday of December. No other ethnics or whites in Chippo had anything special to do that day. Park was ours.
The Aussie moved through the crowd of Viets, the pointed tip of his akubra standing upright like a shark’s dorsal fin. Sunlight sank into the deep laugh lines dripping down the sides of his mouth. He stomped up to our bánh xèo stall.
‘Heard ’bout this from a blog, thought I’d come down to check it out.’
His voice scraped through the heat. He clutched a small digital camera and brought it up to his grey eyes. Cocked it at us.
‘I go to Việt Nam every year, I luv it.’
Snap.
‘Beautiful country.’
Snap.
‘With beautiful food.’
Snap. Snap.
‘And beautiful women.’
Snap.
Snort.
Mum threw her head back and laughed. The Việt Nam woven from my mother’s lips was a country bombed out of its brains, a place where fungus grew in people’s mouths because they only had stale bread to eat after Saigon fell, and where women prayed for their unborn babies to be untouched by Agent Orange. Mum asked the Aussie about his trips to Việt Nam. She wanted to know: Was there still a stall at the Đà Lạt night market that sold steamed glutinous corn with kernels as chewy as sticky rice? Did the mist still descend the deep green mountains of Sapa each morning? Did schoolgirls swoop through the streets of Saigon like doves, the skirts of their pure white áo dài floating behind them as they pedalled on their bicycles? The Aussie grunted and shrugged. I had seen his version of Việt Nam on the internet. When I googled ‘Vietnamese women’, I found YouTube videos of a guy walking the streets in the nightclub area, zooming in on women who he thought were attractive. ‘Vee-yet-nam-eeze wimen aren’t as sexy as the fee-la-pee-nos but they’re very sweet and obedient,’ was his commentary.
Mum slid a paper plate with a bánh xèo on it towards me.
‘Serve him one.’
I poured the fish sauce on the bánh xèo until the turmeric dough was drowning in the pungent amber liquid. The call of the cicadas in the parklands reverberated in my ears. The Aussie circled the table taking more photos of us, each click of the camera a razor blade through the cloying heat. Nineteen-year-old me. Bent over making food. Fringe in sweaty clumps. That is what I imagined his camera must have captured. The Aussie slunk away, plate piled high with bánh xèo, chicken wings fried in fish sauce batter and smoky nem nứơng skewers.
During the afternoon shift, a family friend, Chị Liểu, came to help us. She was a freshie and freshly married to one of my second cousins, Stewie. I’d never met her but I had heard plenty of gossip about the marriage from eavesdropping on Mẹ’s telephone conversations. As Mẹ had paced around the backyard with her hair bound in rollers, she’d discussed the difference between the ages of the groom and bride. He, thirty-five; she, nineteen. My age. Mẹ had jabbered on about how beautiful Chị Liểu was (which meant she was pale) and how her willowy gait had ‘rescued’ her from a life in the rice paddies.
Chị Liểu looped a scrunchie through the long, silky hair that trailed down her back before getting down into a squat at the frying pans. The forest-green V-neck áo bà ba she had on accentuated the milky pallor of her skin. Stewie took off his Yankees baseball cap, scratched his bald spot and burped at us. ‘Orright ladies, need me a Big Mac.’ Then he waddled to his car, flip-flops kicking up dust.
The sunlight was thinning out. My upper arms ached but I was relieved there were less flies buzzing around the yoghurt containers of fish sauce and chilli paste. A bunch of Viet oldies, all men, walked up to our stall. They each had a DSLR slung around their neck.
The leader of the group distinguished himself from the other members with his black beret and a moustache that rivalled Mr Pringles’. ‘Mấy Cô, mấy em, mấy Chị.’ He corralled us women by calling out our ages – Aunty, younger sister and older sister – a typical Viet thing to do. ‘We’re part of the local Sydney Saigon Photography Club. Can we take some photos? We’ll share them with you on the community fair’s website tonight.’
I’d seen Chú Pringles around Bankstown before, sitting outside Cafe Nhớ at a circular stainless steel table with his mates, in a cloud of their own cigarette smoke. Their laughter weaved through the main street of Saigon Place – from the bronze statue commemorating Vietnamese boat people to Oscar Sports Hotel, where my great-aunt had once smacked her husband after finding out about his girlfriend in Việt Nam. Chú Pringles stood out to me because he shouted his jokes to the rest of the street.
He told this joke at least once a week:
‘Men are very loyal but women are not. An eighteen-year-old woman will love an eighteen-year-old man. And when she turns eighty-one, she will love an eighty-one-year-old man. An eighteen-year-old man will love an eighteen-year-old woman. But when he turns eighty-one, he will still love the eighteen-year-old woman.’
He’d look around Cafe Nhớ like he was expecting a standing ovation from the other customers. And when that didn’t happen, he’d compensate by cackling and clapping his thighs at his own joke.
My aunt chuckled and motioned Chú Pringles and his band of photographers towards Chị Liểu and me. ‘Take photos of the young ones. I don’t want to see my wrinkles on a computer screen!’
Chú Pringles nodded so hard that his beret nearly toppled off his toupee. Chị Liểu came over to me at the front table as I handed over plates of sunny bánh xèo to a dwindling queue. I’d only seen photos of Chị Liểu at her and Stewie’s wedding in her village. Her hair had been tucked under a fabric crown and her face made up with white powder and red lipstick. ‘Cho Chị đứng ở đây nha em,’ she said in a voice so soft I had to lean in closer to hear the words. I nodded and shifted along the table so that we stood in the middle. Up close, Chị Liểu’s eyes had a puppy-like softness and she was careful not to show her gums when smiling. I shuddered at the thought of marrying someone like Stewie, who was shaped like a Tasmanian devil, stabbed his food with his chopsticks and bred Shih tzus for a living after doing a decade in Silverwater for growing cannabis. I also didn’t understand how the marriage worked considering Stewie couldn’t even speak broken Vietnamese. We posed for some photos and Chị Liểu went back to the portable stove where she continued watching over the last bánh xèo in her pan.
‘Ah, looks like we have some bánh xèo beauties here today!’ one of the photographer uncles said, rushing over to the stoves.
I watched the lens of his camera coil in and out like an octopus’s tentacle. It reminded me of a scene from It Came from Beneath the Sea, a black-and-white movie I had watched on YouTube. A giant tentacle, suction pads pulsating, snaking through the streets of a city, wrapping itself around a town hall clock before smashing it to the ground.
When the uncles finished taking their photos, Chú Pringles raised a hand in thanks and the men moved on to another stall selling squid jerky salad. By now the sky was transitioning into a dusty blue and a breeze tinkled through the sheets of aluminium foil covering the few plates of leftover bánh xèo that we were going to have for dinner.
The next day, all of the participating stallholders received an email from the organisers thanking us for contributing to a good cause. We’d raised over $40,000 to pay the orphans’ school fees. At the bottom of the email was a link to the Sydney Saigon Photography Club’s online forum where the club had uploaded the photos. I stood behind Ba as he looked through them on our family computer. The first thirty or so photos showed women at the other food stalls. One was of an aunt ladling congee and mauve cubes of pig’s blood into plastic bowls. Another shot captured a chị from the stall neighbouring ours. She was dunking fish-sauce-marinated chicken wings into a deep fryer while smiling at the camera.
Then there were the photos taken at our fam’s bánh xèo joint. I cringed when I saw my sweaty red face and clenched jaw emerge on the screen. ‘Trời ơi, quên cười hả? Not sweet or fresh! How will you find a husband?’ Ba clucked his tongue. I was taken aback by his mention of finding a husband. Throughout the past nineteen years, he’d referred to boys as toxic; meddling with them was akin to taking drugs. I suspected that since I’d flunked the HSC and my career options had been curtailed, maybe he thought I was better off focusing on finding a husband instead. At least I was smiling in the last photo with Chị Liểu. We were standing behind the table doing peace signs, our hands clad in plastic gloves stained yellow with turmeric. I was disappointed to see that the photographer had cropped out my handmade signs.
Ba clicked out of the image reel and continued scrolling through the club’s forum page. The grey scroll bar slid further down the webpage, revealing five more photos that loomed large on the screen. Long strands of hair falling over angular cheekbones. A milky cleavage against dark green fabric. Whoever had taken these photos had angled their lens in a way that stared down Chị Liểu’s shirt while she leaned over the portable stove. One shot even showed the pinky-sized plastic clasp that held together the front cups of her bra.
Chị Liểu’s cleavage was still up on the family computer’s screen when Ba rang the charity fair organiser.
‘I’m not sure if you’ve reviewed all of the photos that were taken but we have come across some … unflattering … images taken of one of our family members.’
I stood behind my father while the phone was pressed to his ear. Being taller than him, I leaned down, the tip of my nose grazing the edge of his tanned ear, and burst out: ‘The photos are gross.’
My father’s knuckles bulged white but his voice stayed calm. ‘If it’s not too much trouble to remove them—’
I couldn’t believe how composed and polite my father was being. I tilted my head so I could yell more easily into the mouthpiece: ‘DELETE THEM NOW AND APOLOGISE.’
Ba edged away, his black rubber slides squeaking on the tiles as he gripped the edge of the computer desk. He managed a soft ‘Cám ơn nhiều’ before hanging up. Turning to me, Ba hissed, ‘Abandon your silly ideas of justice and start acting like a lady.’ The freckles across his cheeks flushed purple.
9
ASL?
Making friends was like scaling a wall, except I was one of those climbing man toys from the 90s with hands made of sticky orange gel. I hurled myself at the surface of friendship again and again only to wobble back down to the ground limb by trembling limb, friendless once more. I didn’t know anyone else at Macquarie University. Most students from SLC ended up at the top unis like Sydney Uni or UNSW. I scuttled from class to class, trying to be a model student after I’d spent six years chewing gum. This wasn’t a problem Tammy shared. She had a lot of ‘homegals’ now that she was working part time at ProfessioNAIL while studying fashion at the TAFE in Ultimo.
The first time she used that word, we were eating lunch outside ProfessioNAIL and Tammy said, ‘Homegal at Crunch Fitness has mad thighs.’ As soon as she’d dusted the bánh mì crumbs off her leggings and returned to the tiny salon, I googled ‘homegal’ on my phone: a young female acquaintance from one’s own town or neighbourhood, or from the same social background. If I applied the first part of the definition to myself, my ‘homegal’ would be a second-generation Vietnamese–Australian girl from Yagoona. As for the second part, my ‘social background’: sheltered nerd. My only ‘homegal’, Tammy, was always meeting new people. Unlike me – stuck at home, paying an emotional debt to my parents and trying to get into law school after my second semester – Tammy was busy building her socialite life, not only at ProfessioNAIL and at Bamboo in the city on Saturday nights, but also in meh places like Chemist Warehouse. Tammy had a knack of always knowing what to say. Reality TV must’ve helped.
One of my spectacular fails was at Assembly Bar when Tammy had dragged me along to Corinne the junior lash technician’s twenty-first birthday drinks. There was trackwork that day so we caught the bus into the city. Tammy had tried to thicken up the wing on her eye with the stiletto point of a Maybelline liquid liner and nearly poked out her right eye when the bus jerked past Punchbowl Station. Her eyeliner zigzagged across the top lid. She deftly licked the tip of her pinkie and smudged the line until the ink settled into a charcoal fog. Repeated the steps on her left eye.
We arrived so late that there were no two seats next to each other at the table in the beer garden. That didn’t faze Tammy. She ran straight up to Corinne and everyone turned to watch the interaction between the two Viet girls with enough eyelashes between them for six camels. The squealing mixed with indecipherable phrases and hugging demonstrated a strong sisterhood. I sat next to Tuyet, who I’d once seen behind the reception desk at the salon. We nodded at each other and she said, ‘Aren’t you Tammy’s homegal who visits all the time?’ All the time? I shrank into my coat and clenched my toes inside my heavy-duty Docs. Was that how everyone at the salon thought of me? As the girl with nothing else to do but visit her one friend? I poked a soggy chip into the aioli and was consoled by the garlic creaminess that smothered my tongue. Tuyet, oblivious to my mini meltdown, sipped beer through heart-shaped iridescent lips.
‘Whatchu do for fun, babes?’ she asked.
The simple question sent me into an internal spiral that manifested itself externally through excessive sweating along my upper lip. I cursed myself for sitting too close to the heater lamp. Tuyet rested her perfect V-chin that was slathered in ashy foundation on a tanned hand, waiting for my response. Micro flecks of blue glitter shimmered along her eyelids and cheekbones. I was caught between trying to discreetly wipe away my sweat moustache and coming up with an answer that wasn’t the truth. I would rather have eaten one of my pigtails than admit to Tuyet the things I found fun: reading stories on Reddit, posting photos of daisies growing through concrete cracks on my Tumblr and watching David Icke videos where movie stars like Nicole Kidman morphed into lizards.
‘I’m pretty busy with uni,’ I mumbled. Tuyet shrugged her shoulder and her bottom lip pouted. Before I could ask her what she liked to do for fun, she turned to the person on her other side so quickly that her ponytail whipped the air. All she left behind was a blueberry scent.
A waiter brought out a glass skull with pink liquid bubbling at its eyes and placed it on the table. Smoke billowed from the forehead and through an opening at the top of the skull. Maybe that’s what my brain looked like when I tried to have conversations with strangers. I searched for Tammy. She was still standing at the head of the table near the silver helium balloons shaped in the number 21. She was giggling with the birthday girl while waving an empty shot glass against a backdrop of fake ivy plants and frosty fairy lights. Tammy caught my eye and mouthed, ‘Come over.’ I clambered off the bench, my boots narrowly missing the veins on Tuyet’s skinny thighs. The thick sleeve of my coat brushed against her ponytail and a few bleached highlights lifted from the static. I muttered ‘soz’ but Tuyet was so engrossed in her conversation that my apology didn’t register. My Docs sank into the fake grass that paved the way to the head of the table. Tammy handed her phone to me. It was opened at the camera setting on Instagram. ‘A piccie for us, babe’, Corinne ordered. She and Tammy posed in front of the balloons. Lean in, hug, pout.
When I finished, Tammy and Corinne came over and stood on either side of me, leaning in to inspect my work. Tammy smelled of vanilla and Corinne of honey. I stepped back. I had seen an image of ants swarming over doughnuts on a subreddit called ‘oddlyterrifying’ and since then sweet smells had been affecting me. Tammy rolled her eyes. ‘Ew. I’m squinting in that shot.’
On the second attempt, my fingers skated across the phone screen and the Instagram window disappeared altogether. Corinne bounced her knees together and glanced back at the table, Colgate smile frozen on her face. I held my breath as I tapped back into the app and didn’t exhale until I managed to get the perfect shot of Corinne and Tammy standing in front of the balloons and tilting their heads towards each other. Tammy added a bit of spice to the shot by kicking one of her heels up and down. The yellow paillettes on her cami top sparkled so violently it made me giddy. It was the right shot. I handed the phone back to Tammy.
On the walk back to Central Station, exhaustion hung in the deep pockets of my coat and the thick soles of my Docs grated against the soaked gravel of the footpath. It had rained. The wetness along George Street reflected all sorts of misery – from the detergent green of the traffic lights to the flickering red, yellow and blue bulbs strung up at a kebab cart where homeguys and homegals queued. I lined up behind a couple who were making out and gave them some privacy by rewatching the Instagram video I had filmed of Tammy and Corinne. All I wanted to do was dive into a tub of aioli.
