Muddy People

by Sara El Sayed

  Mama says that she was never with Charlie. They were friends. Yes, they would skateboard together. Yes, they went to school together. But the rest was a fiction. Nana made it up, Mama says. Nana embellished because she likes a story. I’m not sure I believe her.

  I’ve seen a picture of Charlie on Facebook. He has been married, divorced and married again. He has kids, and his Arab nose still features. Last month my mother travelled to England without us, and she returned with a funny story. She had seen Charlie, who said that his mother had confessed a secret to him. His father was not the Englishman he had grown up with. His father was Syrian. An Arab, like us. Maybe Muslim. That explained the nose.

  I wonder what my mother’s life would have been like if she had known this earlier. Perhaps I wouldn’t have been born. But maybe she would feel more alive.

  RULE #18

  DON’T STAY OUT LATE

  The conference room was deep in the school office, where students were never allowed to go. Not even teachers were allowed in there. Only school officials. The only reason Ms G was present was because she had been promoted to deputy principal, and she was in charge of the elections. With me and Ms G at the table were about ten other kids, all waiting to hear our fates.

  Ms G gave a spiel about how we all did a fantastic job with our speeches. How she could see us all as captains.

  ‘It was a very close race. But the results are in. The four school captains of 2012 will be … Gerard …’

  Gerard made a face that was half glee, half pain, like he had just been punched in the stomach. He had sweat patches under his arms. Like he had anything to worry about. Gerard was unimaginably popular, and impossible to hate. He had given his speech in a Morph suit. He was, in all senses, a goofball. I imagined his name was on every student’s voting ticket.

  ‘Dana …’ Dana nodded, keeping a poker face. I knew if she didn’t hear her name she would have exploded and murdered every person in that room, then burnt down the school. She was a type-A personality. An overachiever. She did cadets, and she was a little scary.

  ‘Phillip …’ The Samoan boy from my Maths class. He was reserved, but had an infectious laugh that made him easy to get along with.

  ‘And … Sara.’ I realised I had been clenching my teeth, because when I stopped my jaw was on fire.

  I had run for school captaincy for the same reason the other kids did – to feel important. To feel like I had some sort of control. To get validation. I wasn’t entirely surprised I had won. There wasn’t a lot of competition, and I had a solid strategy. My speech was full of jokes like My leadership skills are as strong as the foundations of the pyramids of Giza and I’m not a terrorist, but I’m about to blow up this system. Vote for me for longer lunch breaks! And the voters liked that. It wasn’t that I thought they wouldn’t like me because I was Muslim; they just liked me more because I made it known that it was okay to be overtly racist to me, if the mood were to ever strike them. I was their racism hall pass.

  ✾

  The end-of-year awards night was tradition at Victoria Woods, and so was the initiation that followed. On stage, the past captains placed their blazers on us in a symbolic gesture of passing on the torch. Offstage, they told us to meet them at McDonald’s after the event. We were to bring a candle and a lemon. We had to be initiated, earn our public blazer-drape in private.

  Mama was in the audience. After the ceremony, she told me she was proud of me.

  I wouldn’t be home straightaway, I told her. Just a small celebration with my co-captains.

  ‘Okay. But don’t be out too late. Ten maximum.’ It was nine o’clock already.

  I said goodbye to Mama, and rushed over to Gerard, Dana and Phil.

  ‘Do you have your stuff?’ said Dana.

  ‘Yeah. I don’t get what it’s for, though.’

  ‘Apparently that’s part of it. We’re not meant to know.’

  ‘Where are they?’ said Phil.

  ‘Probably already at McDonald’s.’

  I drove Gerard, and Phil went with Dana. Gerard pawed around my car, opening the glove box. He pulled out a CD: The Lion King on Broadway. ‘Is this all you have?’

  ‘You can use the AUX,’ I said.

  He pulled his phone out of his pocket and showed me the screen. It was smashed, and when he pressed the home button, the fractures lit up in a pixelated rainbow. ‘I cannot.’

  ‘How did you manage that?’ I said.

  He shrugged, and inserted the CD. ‘The Circle of Life’ started. ‘A classic,’ he said. ‘This version sounds more cultural.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘You know. Like, African.’

  I laughed. ‘Right.’

  He stuck his head out the window and started singing loudly. I told him to stop, tugging on his sleeve, but that only made him louder. Finally, when a new verse began, he pulled his head back in.

  ‘Do you think we’ll be good captains?’ he asked me.

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m going to fuck up somehow. Or, like, that people will expect things from me that I can’t deliver.’

  ‘Me too,’ I said. ‘I think they picked me and Phil so we could be the cultural ones.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The brown ones.’

  ‘Isn’t that a good thing, though?’

  ‘I guess. I don’t know. I just feel like they wouldn’t have picked me otherwise.’

  ‘I don’t think they would’ve picked me if I didn’t come out in a Morph suit.’

  ‘You’re right. But you get to shed that skin. I’m stuck with mine.’

  Gerard paused. ‘That was deep.’ He stuck his head out the window and belted out the chorus of ‘I Just Can’t Wait to Be King’.

  ✾

  Dana was right. When we arrived at McDonald’s, the four former captains were already at a table.

  ‘No need to get yourselves anything,’ said the main one, Sean. ‘We’ve got this.’

  We sat down. Sean picked up the bun of the Quarter Pounder. Then he picked up the bubblegum McFlurry and poured it into the burger. He replaced the bun. ‘Eat it,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’ said Phil.

  ‘One of you. Eat it.’

  ‘I’m not doing that,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll pass,’ said Dana.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Gerard. He picked up the burger. Ice cream dripped around his knuckles as he bit into it.

  Once he was done, the former captains got up from the table. ‘Follow us,’ said Sean.

  They entered the kids’ play area, and climbed up the slide and into the compartment with a rocketship window. We climbed in after them. The slide was sticky from children’s Fanta fingers. We all huddled in the small space. It was hot, and everyone was sweating.

  ‘To be a good leader,’ said Sean, ‘you have to be vulnerable.’

  I wondered if this had anything to do with the lemon and the candle. I imagined them burning our naked skin and squeezing the juice into the wound.

  ‘You have to tell us an embarrassing story about yourself.’

  I was disappointed. I was expecting torture. To earn my place. To prove myself. But this was soft.

  ‘I think Phil should go first,’ said Dana.

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Because I said so.’

  ‘All right, Phil,’ said Sean, ‘what’s your story?’

  Phil sat quietly, thinking for a moment. Then he spoke.

  ‘So, it was Grade Five. Lunch break. We were in the middle of a game of tiggy. It was intense. Probably the best game we had ever had. I was caught up in it. So intense.’

  ‘What does an intense game of tiggy even look like?’ said Gerard.

  ‘Oi,’ said Sean, putting his finger to his lips. ‘Go on, Phil.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Phil, ‘all of a sudden I felt a really really strong need to go to the toilet. I ignored it because I could not miss out on this game. So I kept playing. But then the turtle-necking bega
n.’

  ‘Fucking yuck,’ said Dana.

  ‘Shut up, shut up,’ said Sean. ‘Let the man finish.’

  ‘And as it happened,’ Phil said, ‘I did something stupid. I was trying to escape being tagged. I was at the top of the playground, and the only way out was the slide.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘If you just imagine pressing a soft chocolate bar against the wall, that’s what happened to my favourite red boxers.’

  ‘Dude,’ said Gerard.

  ‘Anyway, after the incident I bolted to the bathroom and tried to clean myself. I even had a friend try to help me. Fast-forward to after-school care, where we were sitting out on the deck of the demountables, and the carer had a clear look of disgust as her face, her eyes scrunched up at the smell of something putrid. She looked at the bottom of her shoe to see if she had stepped in anything. I copied her and looked at my shoe too, knowing full well the issue was not my sole.

  ‘I survived that, and as my mum picked me up and we walked away, I told her that I had kaga’d myself. That means poop in Samoan. What made it worse was that she wasn’t angry at me. She just pitied me. Anyway. Moral of the story is: no game of tiggy is worth it. Just go when you gotta go.’

  The group was silent for a moment.

  ‘Hey!’ called a voice from the bottom of the McDonald’s slide. ‘I’m going ask you once to get out of there. If you don’t, I’m calling security.’ This reprimand is what I had feared, but I was relieved it had finally come. Breaking the rules was not my forte.

  One by one we slid down the slide.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said to the manager, who looked younger than me. She huffed, before locking the door to the play area.

  The former captains led us towards the road.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I said.

  ‘See that?’ Sean pointed to an abandoned trolley in the park across the road. ‘One of you has to ride down the hill in that.’

  Gerard perked up. ‘I’ll do it,’ he said, already running, not at all watching for traffic.

  ‘No,’ said Dana. ‘I’m doing it.’ Gerard looked a little disappointed, but held the handle of the trolley while Dana stepped in. ‘Sitting or standing?’ she asked.

  ‘Hm. Now that you mention it. Standing,’ said Sean.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said. I didn’t have to check my phone to know it was past ten. ‘My parents will be mad I stayed out this late.’

  ‘C’mon,’ said Dana. ‘At least watch me do this.’

  ‘I really have to go.’

  ‘Me too,’ sighed Phil.

  ‘I’m not taking you home now, Phil. You have to watch me,’ said Dana. Gerard rocked the trolley back and forth as she spoke. She had great balance.

  ‘I’ll take you,’ I said to Phil.

  ‘Pussies!’ said Dana.

  ‘Phil, you earned your place. But you …’ Sean looked at me.

  In the car we were silent. I figured Phil had had enough intimacy for the evening. I drove fast, speeding up the main road and past the school. Phil didn’t speak. He seemed to share the urgency of my situation. As I dropped him off at his house, he said, ‘My parents are going to kill me for being out this late.’

  ‘Same.’

  He smiled. ‘White people never understand.’

  As soon as he closed the door, I sped off again. The roads were empty, striped in an orange glow from the street lights. A traffic light turned red. I was the only car at the intersection. Slowly, I snuck forward. Only a little bit. Front wheels over the white line. Then the back. The light went green before I could officially run the red. I was too pussy to break the rules, even with no one watching.

  I pulled into the driveway and ran from the car. I fumbled with my keys and opened the door. Baba was usually in the front room with the TV on, especially when I was out. He could see the driveway from this vantage, so he knew when I was home. But the couch was empty. I hadn’t checked my phone since the ceremony, because I dreaded what it might reveal. I pulled it out of my skirt pocket, expecting to see a million missed calls. But there wasn’t a single one.

  I walked into the hallway and heard muffled voices. My parents were in their room with the door locked, screaming at each other. They were yelling mainly in Arabic, but I caught the words twenty years and I hate you.

  I went up to my room and dumped my bag on the floor. The candle and the lemon were still there, wedged into the pocket on the side. I took my lunchbox out of my bag and went down to the kitchen. My parents were still yelling. I thought about opening the door to let them know I was home, but decided against it. I emptied my lunchbox out into the bin, and grabbed a box of matches and a knife from the drawer.

  Back in my room, door closed, I lit the candle. As I watched it burn, I wondered what the former captains were planning to use them for. Perhaps they were just a decoy. But maybe they were for me. Gerard, Phil and Dana had played their parts. All that was left was mine, and I ditched before I could do it. Sean had expected more from me. He didn’t even know me, but his words made me feel like a failure.

  The candle started to melt. Wax dripped down my palm and to my inner forearm. It looked as though it was tracing my vein. It was only hot for an instant. The knife sat next to me on the bed. I thought about it. Just for a few seconds. I thought about Tamara, how she never expected anything of me except friendship. I thought about what others had expected of me: Mama, Baba, Ms C, Ms H, the kids at school. Even Lilly. They all had their own idea of who I should be. I thought about how I hadn’t heard from Tamara for so long. I thought about the lines on her legs I had seen at the beach. I thought about it. Then I couldn’t. I blew the candle out. I picked up the lemon and bit into it. It was sour as hell.

  BABA

  Baba calls the way he lives his life trading with Allah. Do good things, and Allah will give good things in return. Like karma.

  ‘But what if someone has a lot of bad things happen to them?’ I say. ‘Does that mean they are a bad person?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he says. ‘It could be that they are bad, or have done something bad, but not always. Sometimes bad things happen as a test of fate. Not as a trade for actions.’ He explains with a surah from the Qur’an.

  ‘This surah, it’s about a cow. It’s talking about when the people asked Moses, “If you have a god, get your god to send us a good meal. Get him to fill our table.” You know, asking Moses to prove that Allah exists. That’s what this surah is about. Having faith, even if you can’t see. Having faith in Allah, and the fate that he has designed for you.’ He pulls one of his copies of the Qur’an off his bookshelf. This one has English translations. He only uses it when I’m here.

  ‘The main thing here is about believing in what happens without seeing a reason,’ he says. ‘For example, my sickness. A lot of people say, “Why me, why me?” when they get sick. No, it’s not about “why me”. Why you? Because Allah chose you to have this. He is testing you. Your reward for the test will come. The reward could be here or in the hereafter, but it will come.’

  ‘So if you do good things, good things will happen to you,’ I say.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But if bad things happen to you, that doesn’t mean you did bad things.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It just means you will get good things later. If you survive.’

  ‘Yes. If you have faith in Allah, you will get good things later.’

  ‘So where does the cow come in?’

  ‘It’s not about the cow. You shouldn’t need to see the cow as proof that Allah exists. Iman.’ Faith. ‘That’s what it’s about.’

  RULE #19

  KEEP QUIET AT THE TABLE

  A year had passed by the time the four of us were sitting around a computer, Dana at the helm with the mouse, Phil, Gerard and I around her. We were editing our captaincy video, The Year That Was, a recap of all we had achieved together. There was a clip of Dana winning a national speech competition. Phil cooking for the homeless. All four of us at the
swimming carnival, me wearing glasses shaped like marijuana leaves. Me a little teary-eyed in the next clip, after being told off by Ms G for encouraging drug use.

  Another clip showed our first school assembly as captains. Ms G had told us that assembly was a formal occasion, and we should conduct ourselves appropriately, using formal language such as good morning, students, and please rise for the national anthem. The first thing Gerard said when he walked up to the podium was, “Wassup V-town? We got ‘Advance Australia Fair’ coming at you.” I don’t know if he just had a bad memory, or if he did these things on purpose to exasperate Ms G. I envied him. These moments, as they flashed across the screen, had been my lifeblood. They were a distraction from my parents. I had spent large portions of the year worrying only about getting Gerard to pull his head inside the vehicle every time we neared a tunnel. Getting home on time didn’t seem so important anymore.

  Our last responsibility as captains was to interview the new recruits alongside Ms G. We split into pairs. Dana and Phil interviewed one group, while Gerard and I took the other.

  Our first interviewee was a tall boy named Aaron. I recognised him as a friend of Dana’s. He had a kind but nervous smile, and the freckles on his cheeks bunched up as he squinted whenever he answered a question. I asked him what he would do for the school if he were successful in gaining school captaincy.

  ‘More English tutoring support for students,’ he said.

  ‘Are you a fan of English?’ I asked.

  ‘No. I hate it. I suck at it. That’s why we need more tutoring.’

  ‘I have a question,’ said Gerard. ‘And this is an important one. Perhaps more important than any question you’ll be asked in your life.’

  ‘All right.’

  Gerard cleared his throat. ‘Xbox or PlayStation?’

  Ms G laughed at Gerard’s question in a way that I knew meant if you weren’t graduating soon, I would kill you.

  ✾

  By the end of 2012, I had finished school, and my parents were divorced. I wasn’t there when it happened. I’ve found out the details over the years since, by sitting at their dinner tables, hearing their stories as I jump between their homes. Why they stopped speaking to each other. Why they couldn’t be amicable. How different their versions of the marriage were. My father thought my mother was playing a game. That’s how he describes it. But because they were in different places, it was difficult to decide which rules to play by.