Muddy People

by Sara El Sayed

  I don’t say anything because I don’t know where to start. I take the digestive and bite it because my mouth needs the distraction. It is familiar and wheaty – too familiar. I spit it out onto the plate.

  ‘Eh da?’ says my father. ‘What is this? Haram.’ He clicks his tongue and I wipe my mouth.

  RULE #11

  NO ONE LIKES SURPRISES

  The ceiling fan in the dining room was on high. Its blades blurred into one, whirring extraterrestrially around a still centre. There was no air conditioning in the house yet. The hot food made it worse, but there was no such thing as a cold dinner in our family. Regardless, there were no complaints, because the dinner table was for eating, not for talking. If we were talking, then we weren’t eating, and if we were eating, we showed our gratitude by shutting our mouths.

  But Mama didn’t follow this rule. Not that day.

  ‘I have a question,’ she said. The little food she had taken on her plate – a bit of red sauce on potato, soft meat – sat untouched. She sounded odd. Almost as if she was nervous.

  Baba didn’t look up from his plate, but everyone else did. Baba didn’t seem at all surprised by the departure from routine. The fan blew the few hairs on the top of his head as he kept his eyes anywhere but his wife.

  ‘A question for who?’ said Mohamed. He was holding his fork like a shovel. This irritated Nana, who always reminded us of dining etiquette. Backs up straight. Elbows off the table. I could see it in her face – she was about to tell him off.

  ‘For whom,’ said Nana. ‘It’s a question for whom.’

  ‘For everyone,’ said Mama. She wasn’t holding her knife, but she was rubbing the silver handle with her index finger.

  ‘Mohamed,’ said Nana. ‘Fork.’

  ‘What? I’m eating,’ he said.

  To understand the gravity of the question Mama asked us, I need to explain what occurred a few weeks before – Open Day 2007 at Victoria Woods State High School. Primary school was coming to an end, and everyone went to Open Day to get a taste of what high school would be like. Of course, the school put out all the good bits. The Home Economics block offered free samples of smoked salmon on Jatz with cream cheese. Neon posters of girls in hotpants dancing on stages were plastered all over the Performing Arts building. Dance was the school’s biggest draw-card. But inside, standing between the barefoot dance girls and the drama kids in socks, was what I considered the best attraction: James Stickler.

  There was something about James Stickler that made me want to commit, body and soul, to him. We had first met two years earlier, when he was in Grade Eight and I was in Grade Five. We were brought together by Immersion Day, designed to encourage primary-school kids to continue with their instrument practice – an attempt to convince us that we shouldn’t abandon our brass or our woodwind or our poor lip control, but nurture it, even if it meant confirming our own social doom. To convince us that it was indeed a good idea to keep lugging around that degraded piece of sweaty metal. To keep pretending we could read treble clef.

  We were about to take a deep dive into the waters of wind orchestra and puberty. Our primary-school band would be combined with the high-schoolers, and we would play with them at a special concert later that evening.

  James Stickler was the only person I had ever met who played the same instrument as me, the baritone. And that was enough. I was immediately obsessed with his four-eyed face. Five eyes, if the pimple in the middle of his forehead was counted.

  We shared a stand and sheet music during rehearsal, an intimacy which to me was akin to sharing a lovechild. The piece was ‘A Disney Spectacular’ – a medley of movie themes. Ms H, the high-school instrumental music teacher, was doing an admirable job concealing her disgust at the sound coming from the group as she conducted us.

  James Stickler and I had eight bars rest while the others played the intro to ‘Be Our Guest’. James turned to me and said, ‘Be natural.’

  My cheeks went a little hot. ‘What do you mean?’ I said. I thought he had caught on to my nervousness.

  ‘B natural. Not B flat.’ He hit the sheet music with his finger. ‘You’re missing the accidental on the B. It sounds weird.’

  But here James was again, in a room smelling conspicuously of foot odour, looking a little older. He was taller and his hair was shorter than when I had last seen him. I liked his hair longer. He still had a pimple, in the very same spot – a testament to his persistently greasy skin, accentuated by a widow’s peak that I hadn’t noticed before. I approached him, smiling just enough for him to think I was being friendly, but not too much in case he had no memory of me. He smiled back.

  ‘Are you interested in joining band?’ he said. His voice wasn’t what I expected. Something must have dropped.

  James offered me a brochure, printed on yellow paper. It felt warm, as though he had been holding it in his hand for a while. I wanted to ask if he remembered me, but before I could, I was interrupted.

  ‘Do you guys have guitars here?’ said a voice from behind me. I turned and saw a boy in a uniform I didn’t recognise. One of the other feeder primary schools the high school was trying to recruit from.

  ‘Yep,’ said James.

  ‘Sick,’ said the boy, and took a brochure.

  The truth was, I didn’t need James to sell me anything. I was already sold. I’d been sold for years. There was never a doubt in my mind about which high school I would go to. It was Victoria Woods or bust. And my parents agreed, in the sense that they did not give me a choice. They would never pay for schooling because, compared to Egypt, any school was private here, and there was no point in paying thousands of dollars a year just to learn a little more about Jesus.

  Carly was also going to Victoria Woods. She followed me around the various stands. She picked up every brochure, including the music one, even though she had never been in band. She wasn’t in anything.

  ‘Since when do you care about band?’ I asked.

  ‘I dunno. Maybe I’ll learn something new next year,’ she said.

  ‘You can’t learn something new in high school.’

  ‘Why not?’

  I didn’t have an answer, but I decided I would make new friends in high school.

  ‘Is that the boy you were talking about?’ she said. A framed picture hung on the wall of the Performing Arts block as we exited. It was of the jazz band. James was in it, and he was holding a trombone, not a baritone. He was branching out, and I needed to as well.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I thought you said he was cute.’

  Carly had no taste.

  ✾

  Those holidays were full of hot rain and bad sleeps. Dreams of yellow brochures and older boyfriends. I would never be going back to primary school, and that was a good thing. My uniform was soiled with signatures from people I didn’t think of as friends – who never really were friends – but who signed my shirt in exchange for me filling up space on theirs. We held on to our faux popularity like a branch in muddy waters. Throughout the summer we’d hear of people up north getting hit by cyclones and we’d curse the storms for the residuals of rain they’d send and the skyrocketing price of bananas. Bananas we didn’t realise were still in our schoolbags, left in December, discovered in January, bruised, beaten and black.

  ✾

  This is the question Mama asked at the table: ‘How would everyone feel if I worked in Maryborough for a little while?’

  She said it, and then picked up her fork and started to eat.

  I had never heard of Maryborough. ‘It’s where the lady who wrote Mary Poppins was born,’ she said, with her mouth full.

  ‘Julie Andrews?’ said Nana. ‘Oh, I love her.’

  ‘No. Not played Mary Poppins. Wrote it. The lady who wrote the book.’

  ‘What? In England?’ I said.

  ‘No, Mama, you can’t go to England!’ cried Aisha. Aisha was at the irritating age of seven, where she was young enough to want Mama with her all the time, but old enough to hit
me in the face in a way that really hurt.

  Mama laughed. ‘No, not that far. It’s just a little north from here.’

  ‘Oh? She’s Australian?’ said Nana.

  ‘Why do you want to work there?’ said Mohamed.

  ‘I don’t want to, I have to. I have to do hours in a regional area so I can finish my studies. It’s been too long. This is a way they let me speed it up.’ She was talking about the practical hours she had to complete so she could qualify as a doctor in Australia. None of us really understood what regional meant, other than existing in some other region, in some other place. Where we lived was regional to us. Baba understood what it really meant, though, because Mama had explained it to him already. It meant somewhere far away.

  ‘If that’s where you want to go,’ said Mohamed, ‘then why are you asking us?’

  ‘It’s not where I want to go,’ she said. ‘But would you be okay with that?’

  Baba, still silent, got up and took his plate to the kitchen.

  ‘I suppose it wouldn’t make much of a difference to you,’ said Mama. ‘You could stay here. But it would mean I would live somewhere else for a while.’

  ‘No!’ said Aisha. She was about to cry.

  ‘Now, I’ve looked it up and Maryborough looks a bit old. The clinic is there, but I think I will find a place live in Hervey Bay instead. It’s right next door to Maryborough. It’s a bay. A beach. It’s nice,’ said Mama.

  ‘I thought you said it’s a little north from here?’ I said.

  ‘It is. Four hours north.’ Mama got up and put the lid on the pot of rice.

  ‘But you can’t do that,’ I said.

  ‘I have to.’

  ‘If you have to, then why did you ask?’

  ‘Well, my question is, actually, would you stay here, or would you want to come with me?’

  ‘No,’ I said immediately.

  ‘For how long?’ said Mohamed.

  ‘A year.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Starting in January.’

  ‘But I can’t,’ I said. ‘I’m going to Victoria Woods.’

  ‘You don’t have to come with me.’

  ‘I’ve planned everything. At Victoria Woods.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ said Mama. ‘You don’t have to come. You can stay with your father.’

  Baba was in the living room. The TV was already on.

  Aisha piped up. ‘I’m going with you,’ she said.

  Mohamed swallowed his mouthful, finally. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said. He liked to pretend he was in control, so he said that even though he was as stunned as I was. Even though it changed nothing.

  Mama stacked Mohamed’s plate onto hers, then Aisha’s.

  Victoria Woods was High School. Anywhere else was impossible to imagine. Barren. Regional. Far away and non-existent. There were people waiting for me at Victoria Woods: James, even Carly. I had the brochures. I had the uniform.

  ‘But I won’t have any friends. How do you expect me to survive high school without friends?’ I said. It’s at that point a parent is supposed to say, you’ll make friends. But Mama wasn’t making any promises.

  ‘Think about it,’ was all she said.

  I hated that she was giving me a choice, even though she knew my mind was already made up. I tried to imagine my life next year. Going to Victoria Woods, being with James and Carly. Living in a house without my mother, and only my father.

  Mama took my plate. I hadn’t eaten much, but she knew I was finished.

  That’s when it came loose. There was a loud crash. I instinctively shut my eyes. When I opened them, shards of opaque glass were all over the table. I looked up and saw the bulb in the fan was exposed. The fan continued to whirl without its missing part.

  Aisha screamed. Mohamed laughed. I began to cry.

  RULE #12

  PETS ARE NOT PERMITTED

  Asbestos Manor was a two-storey house on the Esplanade in Hervey Bay. I didn’t make up the name – nailed to the front deck of the house, which was painted entirely in Sunshine Yellow, was a slat of wood with the words imprinted. It was hard to miss.

  ‘Who the hell lives there?’ said Mohamed.

  We passed it on the way to our new place – the place we would call home for the next year. The car was packed to the brim: our duvets pressed against the back windshield, Mohamed’s toes pressed against the front. The buttons controlling the windows were smeared with remnants of KFC. Aisha was squashed between Nana and me in the back seat. Our knees were scrunched up to our chins, our necks sore from the four-hour trip from the Redlands. Mama was driving, focusing on the GPS and actively ignoring us. ‘Paper Planes’ by M.I.A. blasted through the earphones of my MP3 player. But it wasn’t enough to drown out their voices.

  ‘Probably a drug dealer,’ said Aisha. I assumed she had learned about criminals from Nana’s Sopranos binge sessions. Nana wouldn’t let Aisha watch with her, but I’d seen Aisha sitting in front of the TV from time to time and Nana’s head flopped down to her chest in a deep doze, the sound of Tony Soprano yelling amid sleep apnoea–induced gasps.

  ‘Why would a drug dealer live in a bright yellow house? Are you stupid?’ said Mohamed.

  ‘You’re stupid.’

  ‘You’re the dumbest person on earth if you think a drug dealer would live in a bright yellow house.’

  I caught a glimpse of the sign hammered into the lawn outside Asbestos Manor. FOR SALE: $5,000,000. I imagined the person who lived inside had a grudge. An old and long one. Or was completely delusional. Welcome to Hervey Bay.

  Our townhouse was relatively new and had no rumours of asbestos, as far as we were aware – not that we asked. It shared a wall with neighbours we didn’t care to meet because we weren’t staying long. There were three bedrooms: this divided up as Mama in one, Mohamed in one, Nana and me sharing one, and Aisha on a trundle bed in the living room. There wasn’t enough room for Baba if he wanted to visit, because Mama had claimed the master, and they hadn’t been sleeping in the same bed for a long time.

  Mama’s main gripe about the place was that the kitchen was upstairs. This made it hard to carry shopping from the car to the fridge. But we’d have to live with it for a little while.

  Mohamed set up his fish tank in the living room. Both were modest: the tank could hold about five small fish of different colours and shapes; the living room could fit a couch, a TV and a trundle bed. Some fish in the tank were pretty enough, but there were two little ugly brown ones that would suck on the glass. They had a parasitic look about them. I couldn’t tell if they were enjoying themselves or wanted out.

  Fish were the only pets we were allowed to have. No matter how hard we had campaigned, Baba had never allowed us to get a dog, as he said it would disqualify his prayer; dogs were considered dirty, and one has to be clean to pray, so having a dog in the house would mean his prayers weren’t valid. But Mama said the real reason was that Baba had had a bad experience with a dog in his youth. Now Baba wasn’t living with us, but still no dogs – the place was a rental, Mama said, shaking her head.

  ✾

  On the first day of school, Mama took the morning off work to take us. The air had a scent that reminded me of when we first came to Australia – a combination of heat and sweat. Mama never took time off work unless absolutely necessary, especially now that she had to keep up with Hervey Bay rent on top of her part of the Victoria Woods mortgage. For her to take the time to drive us to school must have meant that she felt sorry for us.

  A sea of kids in red polos flooded through the gates of Fraser State High. I didn’t want to join them, but I had to. I followed Mohamed, who didn’t seem phased by the change of scenery. This was the first time in two years I had been at the same school as my brother. I had finally caught up to him in high school. Being in the same school usually meant living in the shadow of his reputation. It wasn’t that he was super clever or set particularly high standards, it just meant I was always referred to as Mohamed’s Sister. But this
was a new place, where neither of us was known. It might be a chance for us to have each other’s backs for once.

  ‘You have to go to your area,’ he said, destroying my illusions of fraternity immediately.

  ‘What area?’ I said.

  ‘Your class.’

  ‘Where is that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Look at your timetable.’

  I assumed my timetable had been sent to Mama, if I had one. Maybe somehow, in the feverishness of moving, Mama had forgotten to tell me I needed to make a schedule. The email could have gone to her junk folder. Or maybe she thought I was smart enough to figure it out on my own.

  Before I knew it, Mohamed had disappeared.

  Nausea crept up on me. I saw a kid whose shirt looked bright enough to be new, like mine, and followed him. He was weedy-looking, with brown floppy hair and skinny arms.

  At first glance, the place was just like primary school – the open walkways, the demountables, the leopard trees sprinkling leaves all over the footpaths. But the feel was different. A girl who also had a bright red shirt on walked by, smelling like cigarettes and looking as though she had somewhere to be. I thought about smiling at her, but I felt too intimidated. A group of boys stood near a set of tall water bubblers; one was shoving his friend’s face into a tap as he took a drink, and the clang made my own teeth hurt. They laughed it off, the victim holding his mouth with one hand, adjusting his gel-smothered hair with the other.

  We ended up at a tin-clad hall that doubled as a basketball court. The kid I was following obviously knew something I did not. Once the bell rang, students were ushered into lines inside the hall. Everyone seemed to know which class they belonged to. I felt like I was missing something.

  I sat down next to the boy. A teacher at the front of the hall shushed into the microphone – a long, loud shush that caused a squeal of feedback, until we all suffered from tinnitus. The teacher spoke of suspensions. Someone had set a kid’s hair on fire on the bus. The school year had been running for less than three minutes and already there were suspensions.