The Best Australian Stories 2017

by Maxine Beneba Clarke

  ‘He’ll grow out of them in six months,’ his father said. Zhen split in two again, and his new self kicked out at the offending sneakers.

  ‘There’s no call for that,’ his father said. ‘And what has your mother told you about this double act you keep pulling?’ Zhen, sitting on the couch, raised his palms apologetically. His other, silent self scowled and disappeared again. His parents switched on the news and Zhen sat quietly, poring over the small comic book, trying to memorise the story of Monga and his own adjustment to their shared adopted home.

  He’d already read it cover to cover, but kept coming back to the same three pages, the same face. Monga didn’t look like anyone from home, but he didn’t look like any of the people from their new street either. Zhen was enthralled. His parents wouldn’t let him take the comic to school – how will you learn if you just read the same thing over and over? – so he’d painstakingly drawn Monga’s face twice: one on the toes of each of his sneakers.

  The other children were fascinated, but it became frustrating to try to explain who the character was. When he told them he was Australian, they scoffed and when he said the man’s name was Monga, the other children squealed with laughter.

  ‘MONG-a?’ exclaimed his classmate Cody. ‘You drew a mong on your shoes?’

  ‘Makes sense,’ chimed in Lachy, pulling at the corner of his eyes. ‘Mongs drawing mongs.’

  The nickname stuck.

  *

  Before school had started for the year, his parents received a booklist and some suggestions for what their child would need, day to day.

  Sandshoes for P.E. and for going in the sandpit.

  A fruit box for recess.

  Something for Show ’n’ Tell.

  They were an English-speaking household though Zhen and his mother were bilingual. Ten years too early for the internet and yet to make friends on their street, his father tried turning to the surprisingly unhelpful dictionary.

  At recess Zhen opened his lunch box full of carefully sliced peaches, banana and canned longan while the other children plunged straws into tetrapacks, slurping aggressively, speedily – racing.

  ‘What’s that, Mong?’ demanded Cody.

  ‘My fruit box?’ replied Zhen, after a pause.

  The hoots of laughter and streams of mocking gibberish followed him as he trudged towards the empty corner of the sandpit and flopped down, alone.

  Mou mo! Wu zhou lat tat! Don’t touch it! It’s dirty! cried his mother at the back of his mind.

  The ghost of her advice was right; the sand was probably teeming with germs, but he gingerly started digging one foot in, then the other, and soon was grabbing fistfuls and heaping them on top of his shoes. Half sunk in, the colour and Monga’s face soon got buried by the most gentle of avalanches.

  *

  In the comic, Monga was just one of many going about his life against the background that Zhen had been told was the Real Australia. There were sparkling oceans, there were giant fields – and there were stretches of sand, the soft yellows and oranges making a false sea more expansive than anything he’d ever witnessed. Missing were the tall towers of home, the streets packed with people. Every Saturday morning he could remember, Ah Poh would come collect him and they’d navigate the market together. His grandmother was ruthless in her bargaining, rapidly firing off the list of what she wanted to buy along with the price she expected to pay, their shared monosyllabic language making conversation sound like rapid linguistic gunfire.

  Their new home was slower; people savoured sounds like John savoured the lychees Ah Poh would unshell and pop in his mouth to keep him from complaining when their trips went for just a little too long. The shops here were different; clean, quiet. There were no crates leaking melted ice and fish scales onto a slippery floor. People didn’t talk, they just walked up and down in straight lines, stacking plastic and cardboard on top of each other in their trolleys.

  *

  Monga disappeared into the sand completely and the bell rang. Zhen felt himself split in two again, but this time there was no one to tell him off.

  The New One stood up and followed his classmates into the schoolroom. Zhen stayed in the sand, and contemplated his shoes.

  *

  Over the following weeks Zhen was sometimes singular and sometimes plural – something which frustrated his parents and teachers alike. His father grumbled as he was forced, yet again, to inflate their blow-up mattress to accommodate ‘this silliness’. The New One merely grinned and played with his Tazos. Zhen ignored him. Another firmly polite letter had come home with him after the teachers finally noticed the drawings, and he was now tracing out Monga again, this time on the soles of his new, stark-white sneakers so no one would see.

  He sat, or sometimes they’d sit, every Wednesday as his class rotated through their turns for show-and-tell. There were pinecones and older brothers’ trophies, VHS tapes of Disney cartoons, or ticket stubs from that weekend’s football. When Zhen raised his hand to ask why the ball a classmate had brought in was long instead of round, The New One flushed and shuffled further away.

  When his week came, Zhen didn’t even need to think about it. He carefully packed the comic between two exercise books so it wouldn’t bend in his bag and, arriving at the classroom, slipped his backpack in the usual spot: above his name tag, which the teacher had cheerfully decorated with a wombat sticker, between Hannah (emu) and Lachy (bilby).

  Zhen was more excited than he had been all year; he was still ‘Mong’ to most of his classmates, who seemed to have forgotten where they’d gotten the name to begin with. He’d kept quiet about the secret drawings that were slowly wearing away as he trudged from class to class, and from running around in the occasional game of chasey he would join in on – when asked.

  ‘I brought my comic,’ he told his table, sitting down before roll call.

  ‘It’s in my bag. You can all see it after lunch.’ Cody, who sat opposite, looked at him.

  ‘Why? We won’t be able to read it.’

  Zhen stared briefly at Cody, before muscle memory brought his gaze back down to the desk – but he could still see the boy pulling up at the corners of his own eyes, making gibberish noises as the rest of the table giggled. He felt the split happen again, and The New One joined in, a beat after the others. Zhen stayed quiet, eyes fixed on the table, grinding his left shoe into the linoleum.

  The other children were mostly uninterested in Zhen. He didn’t impress them at sport, and wasn’t the best at any of the other things that seemed important: drawing the straightest lines or having the most stickers on the book chart. He knew the alphabet but had sung different songs at his kindergarten back home, so didn’t know as many lyrics to the songs they’d sing each morning. On the occasions they did pay attention, it was usually to point out something he was doing wrong: tying laces with one loop instead of bunny ears; pronouncing words differently; not knowing the difference between dress and skirt.

  At lunchtime Zhen retreated to his usual patch of grass. He’d just plunged the spoon into his thermos when two girls from his table ran up, halfway between upset and laughing. ‘Cody’s reading your comic,’ one of them said, with a giggle at the end. ‘Thought you should know.’ They retreated, Zhen’s eyes following them, then overtaking, looking over at the backpack shelf where he could see Cody and some friends crouched over something.

  They’d gone by the time Zhen got to his bag, which was unzipped. The comic was shoved roughly in at the top, no longer protected by the exercise books. Every page was crumpled, some ripped in half. The New One walked into the classroom and sat alone at his desk, slowly running his fingers over the damaged pages. Zhen stayed at his bag, quietly looking down at his ruined book, before clenching his fists and moving in the direction of Cody.

  *

  Zhen remained plural.

  *

  It was okay at first. When it became apparent that the split was permanent, his father begrudgingly bought a second bed. To avoid confus
ion the family decided to call The New One John. John and Zhen started out quite alike, doing the same after-hours activities and speaking the language that no one else understood when they wanted to discuss things in secret during class. The line down the middle of their room began to appear slowly; Zhen’s side filling up with certificates proclaiming his aptitude for maths and science, John’s with sporting trophies and CDs.

  ‘You boys are being a bit literal,’ scolded their father as Zhen quietly ate fish with his parents while John sat in the other room, fuming that he wasn’t allowed to go to the sleepover that clashed with the festival no one else was celebrating.

  *

  They sat, side by side, in the middle of the night, in the house where they’d lived for almost ten years, eyes fixed on the television – watching the two towers fall after a frantic call from Ah Poh. Their mother came home from work the next day and quietly recounted how a colleague had asked her if she’d ‘heard the news’. ‘Yes.

  We watched while it happened,’ she’d replied.

  ‘Isn’t it awful,’ said the woman. ‘But your lot’s okay.’

  Zhen’s face tightened, while next to him, John seemed not to have heard, too engrossed in the Paul Jennings book he’d gotten out from the library.

  *

  Once a month, their mother would call Ah Poh. After discussing their health complaints and listing the meals they’d eaten that day, Ah Poh would scold her daughter for letting Zhen split into two separate people, blaming both diet and the fact that she wasn’t at home enough. Then the phone would be handed to the boys to answer questions about how school was going; if they were eating enough; when they would be coming to visit. At the beginning John and Zhen would take turns answering. Eventually, though, it got to the point where John would make excuses – homework, tiredness, anything – to avoid talking on the phone, and Zhen and Ah Poh would be left alone, rattling off friendly fire.

  Over time, the phone calls got fewer and further between. Even so, it took Zhen a surprisingly long time to realise that people had stopped seeing him altogether; it took him even longer to realise that it was John who had done this to him. He came home from school one day to see that his bed had been packed up and put in the garage. As he turned to go back in the house, his hand passed right through the doorknob.

  John refused to give him an explanation. He screamed and shouted and begged, but his corporeal self pretended not to hear. Zhen sunk to the ground, and found himself dragged along in John’s wake, an invisible wall forbidding him to get more than ten metres away.

  ‘Uggh, shut up, Mong,’ was the most he got out of John in six months of solitude. He couldn’t remember what the original Monga looked like; the crumpled book was still squeezed in on his shelf, but you can’t turn pages with faded hands.

  *

  It took a few years, but Zhen got used to the silence. He lay dormant, watching himself reply to his mother’s home-tongue questions in English, watching himself refuse to take leftovers to school anymore.

  He watched as the calligraphy set from Ah Poh got dusty, got moved behind the trophies and eventually found a home at the back of a cupboard, the wax seal on the ink never breaking, as the liquid slowly dehydrated, turning to residue; unusable.

  He filled the long lonely stretches by drawing invisible pictures; his bedroom became the market as he traced his finger along the wall, creating crates and cages and characters who existed even less than he did, disappearing centimetre by centimetre in his wake. The times he felt seen were few, and he didn’t know if they were just the product of a desperate hope.

  In their monthly phone call Ah Poh congratulated John’s mother on finally getting him past his phase, though, when the phone was handed to John, her disappointment at hearing dui mm zhi, mm ming bak more than anything else was readily apparent.

  ‘Put me on the phone,’ begged Zhen. ‘I can help.’

  Zhoi gein. Goodbye. See you again. John hung up the phone.

  *

  It was university holidays and Zhen watched as his friends who’d never met him sat around a table, growing hazier with each round of the drinking game they were yet to grow tired of. A circle of cards surrounded a jug filled with a mixture of drinks and he saw himself pull an ace.

  ‘RULE!’ the group shrieked as one. But they were stumped; awash with power and dulled by alcohol, they were at a loss as to how to wield it. There was silence.

  A boy with slightly darker skin than the rest stole a sideways glance at John as he sat, running his index finger along the edge of the card, waiting.

  ‘I know,’ he said with a grin. ‘We all have to speak in our first language. Or drink.’

  Zhen found himself sitting in John’s place, the card now in his hand. People were looking at him. He burbled out a sentence in his long silent voice, perfectly pronounced. His friends laughed, and continued drawing cards. Zhen smiled, and behind him, in the corner, John was furious. When the final king was pulled, ending the game, the rumble switched them back and both sat in sullen silence: one filled with anger, the other hollowed out.

  *

  Ah Poh’s visit came at the worst possible time – in that period between exams finishing and getting results back. John was nervous, worried about failure in a year where the absence of school’s structure had exposed his laziness.

  ‘Vi-sit,’ he’d intoned during their phone call.

  ‘Fisit,’ she’d shot back. ‘Fisit?’ The language they’d once shared had no call for the letter V.

  Hou loi mei gein.

  John sat alongside himself in the back of the car, watching Zhen’s knee bounce up and down as he gazed out the window. Their father found a park close to the entrance and they all clambered out. They saw the poster at the same time. Out of the corner of his eye, John could see Zhen looking down at the memory of colourful shoes, long since thrown away, then back up again, comparing. He blinked, turning away from Zhen, then stared straight ahead at the face he hadn’t seen since he’d wedged the crumpled comic in between two thick books, wincing as his bruised knuckles touched against the spines.

  Dui mm ji, he said, the words stiff, formal and unheard.

  I’m sorry, he said, to himself, and to no one.

  By Proxy

  Cassie Hamer

  It is Rosa’s last night on the MV Toscana, and she would quite like to die. The boiling sea has muddled her insides. Stomach in mouth. Heart in knees. The cabin is stifling and the vessel is in delirium, pickled by sea salt and alcohol.

  Above her, from the dining hall, the piano accordion wheezes and gasps a slurred tune. Heels and toes keep syncopated time on the wooden floorboards. Below her, the bunk vibrates as the ship’s engines power and shudder through the swell.

  ‘Rosa! Rosa! Vieni alla festa. Adesso!’ Rosa, come to the party. Now! Through the keyhole slides Maria’s voice, lubricated by alcohol and hoary with cigarettes.

  But Rosa does not want to go to the party. She wants to die. She wants Mama to smooth the hair on her forehead and bring her stale ciabatta and aqua minerale. She does not want to be this message in a bottle, at the mercy of tides and currents.

  ‘No. Sto male.’ I’m sick. Rosa rolls with the ship and her stomach heaves in time with both. Tomorrow night, he will be in her bed. Mama has said it will hurt, but she is not to cry. The blood will please him.

  Her stomach reels again.

  ‘Va bene, Rosa.’ Okay. From the unsteady beat of Maria’s footsteps, Rosa knows she is stumbling down the hallway, lurching from side to side.

  For Rosa, sleep is a butterfly beyond reach. Instead, she practises her English. Like a baby trying new fruit, she lolls her tongue around the foreign words, tasting and testing them and swallowing the sound in her throat.

  ‘My name is Rosa. How you do? What your name is?’

  The words are a lullaby, talking her to sleep. In her dreams, the white caps are the ghostly fingers of souls lost at sea, grasping at the resolute little boat and trying to pull it under to joi
n them in eternal rest.

  *

  It is the silence that wakes her. Are they still sailing? Rosa shimmies out of the bunk, past Maria’s pale and snoring face. The girl is nocturnal. For all the passengers, the voyage has been dreamlike for its strange configuration of people and behaviours. On this boat, they are not themselves. There is no cooking, no cleaning, no work. They are between lives. Adrift.

  Sitting on her trunk, Rosa pulls on the silk stockings she has been saving. The rest of her trousseau is stowed safely in the hold. There is Mama’s porcelain dining set, the lace tablecloth that comes out at Christmas, and napkins Mama used for her wedding day. All that is new is a chemise, for later, and the stockings. Word on the boat is that one of the English ladies has nylons, but she has a cabin on the upper deck and it is only a rumour.

  In the bathroom Rosa pinches her cheeks for colour. Maria has promised to loan her some rouge but there is no thought of waking her now. She adjusts the wool duster coat, the same one she wore for the photo she sent him. The one of him is in her pocket. She doesn’t need to look, for his face appears whenever she closes her eyes, pushing through the greeny-redness. She touches the picture, though. Rubs it like a talisman. The surface is even smoother than the silk lining of her pocket. She repeats the words Mama said: ‘Good hair. White teeth. Not too skinny. A good man.’

  Hopefully, he has not changed. She remembers him a little from childhood. Hide-and-seek in the olive trees with all the other kids of the village. But that was before the war, before all the men went off to fight and his family moved south to be with his aunt and cousins.

  Up on deck, the morning is blue velvet. The ship leaves a caterpillar trail of smoke. A deckhand is clearing the streamers from last night’s party but stops when he sees her. He leans on his broom and points to the water.

  ‘Derwent … Derwent.’ She repeats after him, ‘Derwent.’ But perhaps her pronunciation is no good, for the young man shakes his head at her and resumes sweeping.

  As the sun arcs into the sky, the ship’s occupants emerge slowly onto the deck – blinking like pipis brought to the sand’s surface. The river is wide and blue but the land is flat and unimpressively empty and disappointment ripples through the crowd.