I was accepted into my second course preference, a combined Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Laws at the University of Sydney, the oldest university in Australia. The course wasn’t due to start for three months. It was a bizarre, vacuous experience, not having anything to study for. For as long as I could remember, school work had defined me. Achievements that I could attain within my domain of control were recorded in black text on report cards and in academic competition results. These successes were tangible, unequivocal. These scores didn’t care about my postcode or my parents’ income or the language I prayed in. Without an exam to study for and weighed down by deep disappointment, in those three months of dubious transition I drifted.
I began to hang around with a bunch of Asian boys from Sydney Technical College. I was a tomboy and the token girl in the group. Always clad in cargo pants and a loose T-shirt, I was just another one of the guys. Overnight, I morphed from a disciplined, studious, pious daughter to a joyriding delinquent who sometimes didn’t even come home. I would take the car and disappear, driving around aimlessly until the early hours of the morning. My parents were appalled and astounded at my new behaviour. When my parents took my keys away, I snuck out of the house in the middle of the night anyway.
We did stupid things that boys do. We had midnight barbecues in the middle of a soccer field, eating carcinogenic sausages in the pitch black. We drove to the city and hung out underneath the harbour bridge, talking about nothing while the boys drank beer. We squeezed into one guy’s family’s Toyota Camry and drove around roundabouts with the handbrake pulled up, burning rubber, laughing hysterically. We switched petrol station numbers and stole ice-cream signs. The perpetual pressure of academic success had abruptly evaporated. I was lost in a new universe of liberty without any assignment or exam to act as my compass. But I delighted in this rebellion. For the first time, it felt like it was I who mattered and not my grades.
One evening, as we were removing the petrol station numbers in a suburban street in the inner-western suburb of Dulwich Hill, a neighbour called the police. When we saw the cops, we all split up and bolted in different directions like hunted foxes. I ran into a random driveway and hid behind a car. The police walked through the streets looking for us with torches. With my heart thumping, I cowered in the shadows while the torch light raked the front of the house, like a menacing lighthouse beam. I wondered what I would say to the house’s occupants if they opened the door. Thoughts raced feverishly through my head. I was sweating. I felt my chest dampen and liquid beads accumulate on my eyebrows as I held my breath. When the cops finally moved on, I sat down in the driveway, pulse still racing. After a long while, I crept out of the driveway and headed slowly back to where I had parked the car. Everyone had scattered and the boys were nowhere to be seen. I paced down the cold, still street occasionally accented by white cones of streetlight. I reflected on what had happened. What if I had been caught? How could I do that to my family? It was an unwieldy reminder that I was not entitled to be a silly carefree young person. I recalled the night of my year ten formal and the sparks coming out of my family’s only car. I finally got to the car and started to drive home. I remembered I could not afford to make mistakes.
I decided I should get a job. I looked in the community newspaper for administrative positions. It took me to a messy office situated within a bizarre junkyard. I had no clerical experience. I had only ever sold pork rolls and cookies. The young woman who had placed the ad was barely older than me; I presumed this was her family’s business. Needless to say, it was obvious I was just looking for a temporary job and was not passionate about working in a junkyard. I floated through a variety of odd jobs, from telesales of roller shutters to stuffing junk mail into envelopes in a factory. I looked in the paper again. Pizza Hut always seemed to be looking for drivers, I noticed.
With the family’s only car, I started work at a Pizza Hut just outside Lakemba in Western Sydney. I was the only female delivery driver in several districts. On the first day, I watched a three-hour induction video introducing me to Tricon, the corporation that owned Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell. I learned about hygiene from mock accidents and comical re-creations. The video was embarrassingly dated, with 1980s hairstyles and over-scripted dialogue made worse by horrendous acting. After I endured the video in the back room, I emerged into the busy kitchen and was given a turquoise cap and collared T-shirt. It was too soon for me to get my own name tag, so I was given the name tag of a previous employee, Mohammed. On top of the minimum wage, I would get $1.86 for each pizza I delivered. The drivers lined up to be given their pizzas and dockets. On the way out, we each grabbed the promotional extras if customers had ordered a special deal. It could be a frozen cheesecake or a box of biscuit ice-creams.
One evening, I grabbed a couple of dockets and pizzas as usual, then looked at the address and momentarily froze. It was a street in Lakemba that a friend of mine lived on. All the major insurance providers refused to insure anyone living on that street. Even brokers were apprehensive. Statistically, it was the most robbed street in Sydney at that time. I opened the passenger door to the car and put the pizzas on the seat. I had been to my friend’s apartment before on that street but only during daylight. As I cruised down the street looking for the address on the docket, I talked aloud to myself. The tabloid current affair shows on television sensationalised statistics and postcodes, I said, but I was a kid born of these streets. There wasn’t anything for me to worry about.
When I finally found the apartment block, I parked the Toyota Corona and placed the heavy club lock across the steering wheel. The beloved Corona was a piece of reliable junk but it was an easy target. I went around the building to the side entrance and walked up the stairs to look for apartment number seven. The stairwell light was broken. As I ascended further and further up the stairs, the darkness swallowed me. It was completely pitch-black. The hot pizzas inside the insulated covers became heavy. I could hear nothing and see nothing. I put one of my hands in front of my face. I couldn’t see it. I walked towards what I knew would be a door and slowly felt it for a number. I traced my fingertips across a cold metallic curve. The air was humid and cavernous. I felt the sheets of carpet melt beneath me like quicksand. It was apartment six. One more flight. I inched along, wary of falling.
Finally I found apartment seven and knocked on the door. I could feel the beat in my carotid artery knocking like a giant kernel against the lining of my throat. ‘Pizza Hut! Delivery!’ I stepped back. The door opened. Inside was a group of six or so men, huddled on and around a lounge. There was a strong smoky smell. They all had their shirts off. I bent my head down, hiding underneath my cap. The guy who’d opened the door went to get some cash. The men all looked at me and said something I couldn’t understand. The man who gave me the money said, ‘Keep the change,’ and smirked like a cartoon villain. I didn’t even bother counting the money. Later I found out the tip was fifteen cents.
I quickly left the building and prayed to my grandmother that my car was still there. Please, please, please. I wouldn’t be able to face my parents if the car was gone. As I ran out to the street, she gleamed at me under the streetlight. A flood of relief washed over me. I looked at the Corona affectionately. The familiar bubbles of rust under the paint and broken metal trim were suddenly reassuring. I got in the car and opened the club lock around the steering wheel. I had parked the car in a small laneway. It was too narrow to do a full U-turn or even a three-point turn. I inched forward and back in what turned out to be a six-point turn. Without any power steering, it was a real effort. My forearms started to ache and I was sweating.
Finally I got out of the laneway and drove back to the store. The delivery had taken longer than the promised thirty minutes, the hallmark of Pizza Hut. The manager said, ‘That took a while. Hey, you have a bit of chow mein on your face.’ Chow mein? It was a while before I understood what he was implying, that I made some sort of detour, maybe even home to eat some food. A protest of some
kind formed on my lips but wouldn’t come out. All I could think was that chow mein was a Chinese dish, one that I hated. I was Vietnamese. Clearly we Asians were all the same to him.
‘Next order’s waiting for you. Hurry up.’ I tried to spit out a seething insult but it never reached him. My cheeks burned.
I walked outside onto the busy street, desperate to get away from the wafts of baking dough and melting cheese.
Tarek, an Iranian American guy on a working holiday, said, ‘You shoulda told ’im to fuck off.’
I retorted, ‘And lose the chance to wear this uniform? No way.’
He laughed and got into his rented car.
The last time I wore the Pizza Hut uniform was at an eighteenth birthday party. A girl from school invited me and I had to come straight from a shift. I grabbed an empty pizza box and scribbled Happy Birthday on the inside. When I arrived at the door in my uniform, my friend’s mother really did think someone had ordered pizza. I’m sure she was offended as there was plenty of homemade Indian food. I went out the back to where the birthday girl was and said, ‘Someone call for a delivery?’ just like the red-headed Dougie in the Pizza Hut ads. My friend liked my hand-delivered pizza birthday message, despite the stench of pepperoni.
The boys I used to hang out with had gone to Queensland for a holiday. When they came back most of them got girlfriends. By this time I had started working odd jobs and was too tired to see them anymore, especially when I was still delivering pizza at night. In between their girlfriend time and my need to earn some money, we drifted apart.
Towards the end of the three-month break before university started, I became involved with the Vietnamese Catholic Youth Organisation. Needless to say, my parents were relieved. Văn was already a member of the group. There were retreats, camps and meetings. At each large communal gathering of Vietnamese Catholics, which often brought together over ten thousand people, the members of the youth group would be stationed at key points of Paul Keating Park in Bankstown, selling candles for the church. The yellow and red-striped flag of old South Vietnam flew high. We prayed for political prisoners in Vietnam who fought for religious freedom. We prayed for all those souls who did not make the journey to Australia like us, hoping that their deaths weren’t in vain and one day Vietnam would become a democracy. Amen. When the Lunar New Year Tt festival came about, the Vietnamese community organised a three-day celebration at Warwick Farm racecourse. Stalls would be set up with Vietnamese bingo, grilled pork and barbecued corn, and a stage would feature Vietnamese boy bands and fashion parades. Depending on whether there was an upcoming election, the opening ceremony would attract the state premier, the opposition leader and sometimes the federal Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs. Sponsorship money poured in from community and business leaders.
Around the perimeter of the park, marquees were erected from poles and industrial sheeting, each housing fake Ochna integerrima trees with lifelike yellow blossoms, the kind that only flowered during Tt in Vietnam. Lucky red pockets were hung from their branches. Kids paid $1 for a lucky dip, hoping the pocket they chose would give them a greater return. As evening fell, lines of firecrackers were lit, sending up flakes of red paper that came down like a magical curtain. Vietnamese martial arts schools had crews of lion dancers who performed amid the exploding firecrackers, dancing like fearless warriors born again from ancient times.
The festivities at Warwick Farm were the community’s attempts to preserve and celebrate sacred traditions. Despite having travelled for thousands of kilometres across treacherous seas and facing all manner of challenges in a new nation, home had come with them. For those three days in the middle of an Australian summer, on a racecourse near the Hume Highway, opposite a giant car dealership, Vietnam came to us.
Each year at the opening ceremony of the festival, academic awards were given out to students who had excelled in the Higher School Certificate. In the year I graduated from high school, the Vietnamese Catholic Youth Organisation had a food stall. I volunteered at the stall, taking orders and preparing the food. That year, I was to receive an award because I came fourth in New South Wales for English out of tens of thousands of students. I didn’t think it deserved public merit but by the community’s standards, it was good enough. There was a girl who got a perfect score of 100 for the Higher School Certificate. She was also pretty, nice and skinny. But I was sure she wasn’t funny. Awards were given to a set of twins who’d scored something like 99.99 and 99.95. They wore their school jerseys on stage, their scores printed on the back. Seriously.
On the day of the ceremony I stuffed a traditional Vietnamese dress into my bag, intending to put it on just before I went on stage to receive my award. The food stall was incredibly busy. I was on my feet all afternoon and didn’t realise that the ceremony had started until one of the other volunteers heard the announcements being made. I quickly got changed out the back of the stall and looked down at my feet. I was in sports shoes. I had forgotten to pack high heels to go with the dress! Frantic, the volunteers all checked their shoes to see whether I could fit into someone’s decent-looking sandals or high heels. We walked up and down the aisles to see if there was a customer who would lend me appropriate shoes for five minutes. Finally we found something that would work. I quickly bolted across the dusty course, past miniature rollercoaster rides and through plumes of grilled-pork smoke to the back of the stage. I slipped on the shoes and got onto the stage. I was panting, my armpits stained with sweat, while my hair reeked of corn and shallots. The bottom of my white silk pants underneath the traditional áo dài had a visible rim of dirt. On the stage, the lights were bright. The MC spoke of the pride of the Vietnamese community residing in these young shiny hopeful stars. Our Future. One by one, the stars would collect their awards. I couldn’t see my parents in the audience but I knew that they were there. I hoped that my father would be happy. I might not have come first, but it was recognition within the community that mattered. A community that spoke his tongue and understood about afternoon and night shifts, steel-capped boots, grease and deadlines. A community that knew my result was a marvellous achievement. I was handed a certificate and a piece of 18-carat gold donated by a Vietnamese jewellery store in Bankstown. The Vietnamese know that recognition is great, but gold is even greater. When the ceremony was over, I ran back down to the stall and got changed. I gave my parents the gold and was greeted with smiles and pats by the members of the youth group. The older women who cooked at the back laughed as I put on my sports shoes and returned the high heels to their owner. Exhausted, I went home that evening, award in one hand and my traditional dress in the other.
Just before university started, the tutoring college I had attended held an end-of-year function. I was the master of ceremonies. It was the first time many of my peers had seen me in a dress. Even to my own year twelve formal I had worn a red satin suit cheaply tailored by a Vietnamese woman who lived in Punchbowl. The tutoring college function was held at the Unicorn Restaurant above a Lebanese café in Bankstown, opposite the railway tracks. It was there that I met David, a tutor at the college. One of the games we played on the evening was a joke competition. He got on stage and told a disturbingly crude joke that he, at least, found devastatingly hilarious. He laughed profusely at his own joke while awkward groans could be heard in the room amid uncomfortable token smiles. I thought he was either brave or stupid. Since no one else participated in the competition, he won by default. David had a certain self-assurance about him and was quite solidly built for a Vietnamese guy. He was handsome and had an attractive no-nonsense Western Sydney streak. I concluded he was brave.
When David and I spoke at the event, he said he was only a year older than me. I didn’t believe him—he seemed much older—so he took out his driver’s licence to prove it. Maybe his inherent resilience and outward confidence was groomed from time at his high school, where occasionally police sniffer dogs patrolled the school grounds. Maybe it came of being the only boy in a Vietnames
e family. From wherever it had derived, it was exponentially greater than my own, and I found it very attractive.
I waited for him to call me, but when two weeks passed without any communication, I decided to initiate contact. I got his number from the college and dialled.
‘Hello? Is that David? Do you know who this is?’
‘Yes. Yes, I do.’
‘Do you want to meet up some time?’
‘Okay. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’
‘Don’t you need to know where I live?’
Apparently he was also a bundle of paradoxes. He did martial arts and protected his friends in street fights, but was too shy to call a girl. We began dating. At eighteen years old I held hands with a boy, kissed and drank alcohol for the first time. As the world rapidly opened up to me under David’s loving and protective watch, I felt like a child in an expanding and infinite universe, full of delicious new experiences which whizzed around and through me like dancing dandelions.
My parents had no idea I was dating David. Around this time, we had moved from Punchbowl to Chester Hill, eleven kilometres northwest. The curse of the house we had been living in had begun to poison our minds and infect our sleep. Before the move to Chester Hill, I scanned the Vietnamese community newspapers for rentals and conducted my own inspections before providing a final list of recommendations to my parents. I found a place one street away from David’s house. It was a clean, decent place with a granny flat where the landlords lived. My parents accepted my recommendation and we moved in.
Shortly after the move, I introduced them to David. We were both very nervous. He had a shaven head so when he prepared for the meeting he wore a beret as well as a collared shirt and sleeveless vest over the top. It took him seven minutes to walk over from his house. When he came to the door, my father took one look at him, said hello, turned around, grinned broadly and then vanished into the backyard. I was gleeful. Silent withdrawal was usually my father’s tacit approval. (But sometimes, confusingly, this move also signalled tacit disapproval.) My mother chatted to David politely, asking about his family, when they’d arrived in Australia and what he was studying at the University of New South Wales. His parents both had white-collar jobs. His mother worked for a state government department and his father was an engineer. I found it baffling that they did not sew and work in a factory like most of the Vietnamese parents I knew.
We Are Here Page 14
