by Nick Earls
I want to sound tough, even though Mom won’t like that. They trapped me there. That’s how it felt. I was trying to get away. But it feels stupid to say that to Dad, so I don’t. Dad’s always talked about people standing up for themselves. Anyway, it wasn’t much of a push. Lachlan Parkes would have stayed standing if he hadn’t tripped over his own feet. And he threw the first punch. But no one’s needed me to explain all that. He was way too in the wrong already.
‘The principal was good, Piet,’ Mom says. ‘He called it racism, pure and simple.’
My father nods. ‘Okay. Well, if you’re sure it’s under control for now . . . I can go in and talk to him when I’m home. I can give him a bell tomorrow if you need me to. Whatever it takes, Herschelle. We’re going to make this work.’
The picture starts to break up, with his safety jacket turning into chunky fluoro orange pixels. There’s a shudder and the pixels come together again. The ceiling light’s right above him and his messy hard-hat hair is casting a shadow down his face. He’s listening, peering at us on his screen. Maybe we’re pixellated too.
‘Thanks, Dad,’ I tell him. ‘I think it’ll be okay.’ I have no idea if it’ll be okay. I don’t know what bullies do next in this country, or what it takes to make them back off. And now I know that sometimes, whatever you do to fit in, it won’t work if other people want you to be an outsider.
‘Your pa was just angry, that’s all,’ Mom says to me afterwards. ‘He doesn’t really want you to go hitting people. You know that, don’t you?’
‘I’m not going to go hitting people.’
‘If there’s any more of this rubbish, you tell someone, eh?’ Mom says. ‘That’s the way to go about it in an Australian school, and it’d be a good way to go about it anywhere.’
But she can tell me that all she likes. I still don’t want to face them in the morning. Not Lachlan. Not Max. Not anyone at One Mile Creek State School.
‘I hate them all,’ I tell her, because it feels good to say it.
‘Hate’s a strong word. Just stick with the right people. Max seems like a good guy. Sometimes good people get it wrong, Hersch. They make mistakes. Particularly when they’re afraid.’
‘But I thought Max was my friend.’ It’s him I’m most angry with. ‘And he was part of it.’
Mom’s about to say something, but then she pauses and takes a breath.
‘He’s been a target of Lachlan’s too,’ she says. ‘His mother told me. It’s not public at school, so you have to keep it to yourself. That’s partly why Lachlan’s on that program to manage his behaviour. He’s been bullying Max.’
It’s not public, but I bet Harry and Ben know. It’s only now I realise that, ever since I started at the school, the four of us have been avoiding Lachlan. But why couldn’t Max have told me? Why didn’t I tell him? Because you don’t. Because you just hope it’ll stop, even when that doesn’t fix anything.
So maybe Max felt trapped as well, afraid of what would happen if he didn’t go along with it.
‘You weren’t there,’ I tell her. ‘No one understands me when I talk. I have to keep repeating myself. And I don’t understand them a lot of the time. And when they do hear me properly, I use too many words they’ve never heard of.’
She nods. ‘I know. Sometimes it feels like we’ve got to work this country out one word at a time, but it’ll get easier. In the meantime, if brains were dynamite, Lachlan wouldn’t have enough to blow the wax out of his ears.’ She smiles. ‘That’s an Australian expression. I heard it on TV. Now, I think the school is doing well with this, don’t you? Mr Browning calling it racism takes it to a level that means it can’t be ignored.’
‘But is it?’ I check to see what Hansie’s doing. He’s at the far end of the living room, building something out of Lego, not listening. ‘Is it racism, really?’
‘Well . . .’ She stops to think about it. ‘Well, of course it is. You were chosen as a victim because of how you speak and because you’re foreign. I know it’s not racism like we see at home. Racism is so complicated in South Africa. You know the history. If it’s part of the system, you can’t fix it in one go. But what happened to you is racism too, in its own way.’
I’m white and I’m the victim of racism. My whole life has failed to get me ready for that. Racism has been there, all around, talked about often enough – far more than here, probably – but it hasn’t meant this. It hasn’t come my way, our way, not like this.
Long ago, our family owned a farm. We have a black-and-white picture of it. My great grandfather is in the centre, in a pale suit, seated in a chair made from dark wood and with a back high enough to be like a throne. For the photograph, the chair has been placed on the verandah, at the top of the front steps. He’s holding a rifle in his hand – holding the barrel of it and resting the butt on the ground next to the chair. On either side of him, behind the verandah railing, stand his family. Beyond them, also on the verandah, are the white managers and overseers.
In two rows going down the wide staircase, one on either side, the black indoor servants are standing in their uniforms. Seated on the dirt, legs crossed, are the black farm workers, some in rough handmade European clothes, some in traditional clothing, some shirtless, with goatskin bags on their laps.
Our farm fed all those families, black and white, but some ate at a grand table and others at campfires. Whenever I hear the word racism, I see that picture. I can’t help it. Dad says my great grandfather wasn’t a bad man – just a man of his time. Apartheid has come and gone since then, but its going hasn’t given everyone the same opportunities. Some people got rich. Some people got chances they didn’t deserve. Some people still live in shacks made from rubbish and don’t have toilets.
It’s complicated. So we’re here.
I set the alarm on my phone for five-thirty the next morning and, when it goes off, I make myself start coughing. I cough approximately every thirty seconds, and soon enough my throat’s actually sore and my voice is hoarse.
Mom comes in to check after an hour. It’s obvious I’m too sick to go to school.
I can’t cough every weekday for the rest of my life, though. I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow, and Friday and next term. Mom emails school to say I won’t be in, and Mr Browning calls not long after nine to talk to her. From my room I can hear her explaining the cough, and it’s only later that she tells me who it was.
I let myself ‘get better’ as the morning goes on and I decide that if there’s no way out of going tomorrow I may as well put in some work on my Cape Town presentation.
There are so many ways to tell it. History is not just history, not just dates and facts. As I look through the old paintings online, I wonder if we could have done better there, or done better sooner. Could Cape Town have worked for everyone?
My Cape Town talk is the only reason I don’t hate the idea of going to school the next day.
After sitting through so many presentations on the Moreton Bay colony, I almost feel I personally know Pamphlett, Finnegan and Parsons, the ex-convicts who were blown off course on a voyage to fetch cedar, and who became the first Europeans to see the Brisbane River. And it turns out that Brisbane has its own race history. Harry covers some of it in his talk. Apparently, in the early days, Aborigines were shot dead on the spot by soldiers if they entered the colony’s corn fields. Even now there are at least two streets near the inner city called Boundary Street because Aborigines had to be outside them after dark.
After the final two presentations, it’s my turn. Ms Vo has already loaded my images, and she explains my topic to the others as I walk towards the front of the room. My mouth goes dry, but I tell myself I’ve got nothing to lose. I turn and look anywhere but near Lachlan or Max, and I make myself start.
‘Today, I will tell you the story of the Cape colony that became Cape Town through the story of one building.’
My first image is an old map, from the early days of European exploration. I explain that the Kh
oikhoi arrived in the area close to two thousand years ago and that the first European was Bartolomeu Dias in 1488, looking for a trade route to Asia.
Next I show the famous painting of Jan van Riebeeck arriving in 1652 with his men from the Dutch East India company, on a mission to set up a halfway station between Europe and Asia to provide food and water to ships.
Then I show an old etching from 1674 of a toolshed in a garden planted by Jan van Riebeeck. This small building was enlarged in 1679 to become a guesthouse for important visitors. In 1751 it became the summer residence of the Dutch governors. It’s called the Tuynhuys.
Next, when the Dutch were allies of the French, it was remodelled by a French architect, but with Dutch East Indies influences. Then the Cape became British and the Tuynhuys was remodelled again, and called Government House.
‘But there were further changes ahead for the colony.’ I click to a map with arrows leaving the Cape for the north and east. ‘In the 1830s and 1840s, thousands of Boers – which is the Dutch or Afrikaans word for ‘farmers’ – didn’t like aspects of British rule and moved away to set up the Boer republics. The British attempted to turn the Cape colony into a place for British convicts, similar to Australia, but the community leaders pushed to have their own parliament instead, and this was granted in 1853. The governor opened parliament for the first time at the Tuynhuys in 1854.’
The next image is an engraving of the occasion, with the governor sitting on a platform, holding a document, with a crowd of men wearing long coats and high collars standing nearby.
‘And here’s a thing not many people know about Cape Town,’ I tell them. ‘This parliament did not have many powers, but it did have the power to write its own constitution. And when the Cape leaders wrote it, around one hundred and sixty years ago, they banned race and class discrimination and gave every man a vote, regardless of colour.’ I let my finger run along the crowd until I find the man I’m looking for. Second from the left is a well-dressed man who is clearly not white. ‘This was a radical move for the time. Those rights were lost for quite a while under Apartheid, which took the vote away from black South Africans. It told them where to live and anyone who broke the rules was treated brutally. Leaders who tried to change the rules were put in prison. The Tuynhuys continued to be the governor’s residence until South African independence in 1961, when it became the Cape Town residence of the president.’
I show them pictures of the Tuynhuys in the early 1970s, as work was done to give it back the look it had in the eighteenth century.
‘On its steps in 1992, President FW de Klerk announced the end of Apartheid. In 1994, it became the Cape Town office of a Xhosa man who became South Africa’s first black president. That was Nelson Mandela. So, there it is – a building built by the Dutch, French, British and their slaves from Asia, occupied by an African president. And that is Cape Town. It’s a rainbow city in a rainbow nation, with people from all those backgrounds in it. The main languages are Afrikaans, Xhosa and English, but there are other languages too. That’s why South Africa has names and words from so many different backgrounds. So, even when we speak English, it’s not the English you know. Sometimes the Afrikaners have words that are a better fit, sometimes the Zulus, sometimes the Xhosa, sometimes others, and this is what makes us South African.’
That’s when I look at Lachlan Parkes, deliberately, making sure there’s eye contact.
But I’m not finished yet.
‘I’m not saying that South Africa is a perfect country or Cape Town is a perfect city. There are many problems, but they’re not all the same as the old problems and that’s good. Nelson Mandela, who had suffered a lot, put that suffering aside to show that the best future is not built from revenge. He set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, based in Cape Town, to deal with the violence and discrimination in South Africa’s past. People were invited to come and be heard, and to move forward. Seventeen other countries have since used the same model, inspired by South Africa.’
I stop for a moment. My time is up, but I have one more thing to say. Ms Vo doesn’t move to make me finish. Everyone is quiet, waiting.
‘One of the arrivals when Cape Town was less than ten years old was a man called Willem Schalk van der Merwe, who sailed as one of the crew of the ship Dordrecht. He arrived in 1661 and was allowed to leave the ship and stay. He was in the colony when the Tuynhuys was first built as a toolshed for a garden. He was granted land and became a farmer. In 1668, he married Elsje Cloete and they had thirteen children. Today, South Africa has thousands of van der Merwes. Many of them are famous, as cricketers, rugby players, scientists, actors and more. I’m not proud of everything done in the van der Merwe name, but I am proud of a lot of it. At the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, van der Merwes were involved as both perpetrators and victims. Three hundred and fifty-four years after my ancestor arrived in Cape Town, my family has moved to Australia determined to be neither of those.’
It’s over. I nod towards Ms Vo to let her know.
She’s been leaning against the edge of her desk, watching, and she stands up and says, ‘Amazing.’ She looks from me to the picture of Nelson Mandela on screen. ‘Great talk, Herschelle. We might make it for assessment after all.’
She starts clapping and the others join in. It sounds louder than the applause anyone else got, and I don’t think that’s just because I’m at the front. Max is certainly clapping harder than he’s done for the rest of the presentations. Even Lachlan’s clapping and he didn’t bother for most of the others.
Harry’s hand goes up. Ms Vo nods in his direction and he says, ‘Is it okay if we ask questions?’
The questions last until the siren goes for lunch, and it doesn’t matter that I can answer only about half of them. People are still talking to me about my presentation on the way out of the room. Max is standing nearby when I get my lunch out of my bag. He glances at me, and then looks at his sandwich.
I ask him if he wants to play handball and he says, ‘Yeah, that’d be good.’
‘I’m in,’ Harry says. ‘But Ben’s sick today. We might have to play singles and take turns. Three doesn’t work so well.’
I start looking around the playground. I still don’t know most of the people here, though.
On the far side, Lachlan Parkes is standing by himself, temporarily without his fans.
Max sees him too, and shrugs. ‘We could ask Lachlan,’ he says.
He watches me, waiting to see my response.
I nod.
Max leads the way towards him, with Harry and me on either side.
‘Are you sure about this?’ Harry says to me, while we’re still out of range.
‘Not totally,’ I tell him. ‘But we’ll be in the same room and same playground as this guy for the rest of the year and all of next year. We don’t need to be his best friends, but we need to stop thinking all the time about where he might be and what he might do.’
Max’s grip on the tennis ball tightens as we approach. He blinks as Lachlan looks our way, but he keeps walking. Lachlan straightens up, as if he should get ready for something. He looks past us, checking for teachers or some other trouble. Two nerds and a new boy approaching of their own accord – it’s clearly not something he’s used to.
Max stops, bounces the ball and manages not to fumble the catch.
‘We need a fourth for handball,’ he says. There’s a quiver in his voice, but he stops it. ‘You up for it?’
Lachlan stares at him, processing, wondering if he’s heard Max properly. ‘Handball?’ He watches Max bounce the ball again. ‘With you three?’ He waits, as if he needs confirmation. Max just nods. ‘Yeah. Okay.’
Max leads the way to the nearest marked court, and we line up – me and Max against Lachlan and Harry. Lachlan starts by hitting too hard almost every time, but he’s got a smarter, softer shot that works a lot better when he picks his moment. All in all, he’s not a bad player, but Max’s skidder is now close to perfect and in the end i
t’s our skidders that make the difference. Lachlan and Harry go down 21–16.
‘I’ll get you next time,’ Lachlan says afterwards, in a way that has no hint of threat in it at all. His hand shapes to play the skidder, but he’s got a lot to learn.
Before the talk, I wanted the holidays to come because Dad would be back from the mine and because I’d be away from everyone at school. On the first day, though, I’m at Max’s place. The quad bikes are awesome, with fat chunky tyres and chrome exhaust pipes. They sound like a chainsaw tearing through a branch when you rev them. The track is flat in most parts, but has some banked curves with old tyres stacked around the edges.
As Max is ripping into a lap to show us how it works, I’m standing there trying to take it all in. Out the back of his house, Max has his own race track. I don’t think I’d do anything else but race quad bikes if that was me. Well, maybe get a motocross bike.
His dad sits me on the second quad bike and takes me through the controls and safety issues.
‘It’s automatic,’ he says, ‘so you don’t have to worry about gear changes. But take it easy, particularly at first. Stay low down and only go up the banked bits when your speed takes you there.’
He checks that I’ve got the helmet fitted right and that I’m comfortable in the seat and can reach everything I need to. Then I’m off, hopping and lurching and then driving across the dirt.
Even with the helmet, the engine’s stupidly loud and I can feel it vibrating up through my body. I set off after Max. I’ve got no chance of catching him, but that’s okay. The wheels are spitting up red earth and I’m buzzing across the ground. I nearly stall on the first bend, but I hold it together. After two laps, I’m starting to get the hang of it and planning how to time the third better.
When I get off to hand over to Ben, my entire body is jangling and my hands are numb. I realise I’ve been gripping the handlebars pretty hard. I pull the helmet off and the breeze feels cool on my sweaty head.
